- USA Release 2LP + Booklet Edition
“Live After Death” isn’t just a souvenir from the road — it’s a lightning strike pressed into vinyl. Recorded across roaring arenas, the album captures Iron Maiden at full throttle, a touring machine lined with sweat, denim, and too-much-fog-machine.
“Live After Death” isn’t just a souvenir from the road — it’s Iron Maiden freezing a lightning bolt in vinyl form. Recorded at the height of the World Slavery Tour, it captures a band running at full throttle, pushing heavy metal into stadium territory without losing an ounce of grit. Even now, dropping the needle feels like stepping into a time machine lined with sweat, denim, and too-much-fog-machine.
Mid-80s metal was a glorious mess: glam on MTV, thrash breaking out of garages, and the old guard refusing to slow down. Maiden sat somewhere above the chaos, riding an impossible wave of ambition that fused theatrical staging with razor-sharp musicianship. This album arrived right when the genre was exploding globally, and it proved that metal could be both larger-than-life and brutally human.
After months of punishing travel on the World Slavery Tour, the band decided to bottle the insanity. They set up at Long Beach Arena — a venue they practically turned into a second home — and later at Hammersmith Odeon for the UK shows. Producer Martin Birch followed them like a sixth band member, capturing the chaos without sanding off the rough edges. The goal was simple: document what their fans were living night after night.
The album roars with a mix of precision and danger, the kind of energy you only hear when a band is teetering between exhaustion and transcendence. Bruce Dickinson sounds utterly possessed, the twin-guitar lines weave like duelling serpents, and Steve Harris drives everything forward with his trademark gallop. Long epics like “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” hit with cinematic force, while crowd-pleasers like “The Trooper” feel even rowdier than their studio counterparts.
While 1984–85 gave us live albums from Scorpions, Priest, and plenty of arena rockers, none delivered this level of sheer theatre. “Live After Death” sits somewhere between a battlefield report and an opera. Compared to Metallica’s raw bootleg-like live tapes or AC/DC’s straight-ahead stomp, Maiden brought a sense of scale — a metal blockbuster before the term even existed.
Some critics claimed the sound was “too perfect,” accusing the band of cleaning things up in the mix. Others insisted it was too raw and chaotic. That’s metal fandom for you — two camps arguing from opposite cliffs while the rest of us just blasted “Aces High” until the walls shook. The artwork also stirred debate, because of course Eddie crawling out of a graveyard always does.
Behind the scenes, the tour had battered them. Months of travel, punishing setlists, and almost theatrical production demands pushed everyone to their limits. But the strain also forged a strange kind of chemistry — you hear a band leaning on instinct, running on fumes, yet performing with supernatural precision. This wasn’t a laid-back live record; it was five men proving they could survive their own ambition.
Upon release, fans devoured the album — especially the U.S. edition with its hefty booklet of color photos. Critics eventually came around, praising its scope and unapologetically epic sound. Four decades later, it remains the standard by which metal live albums are judged. Even listeners who weren’t born in ’85 treat it like scripture.
Spinning “Live After Death” today is like opening a sealed jar of vintage stage air: scorched amps, screaming crowds, and the warm hum of a band at the height of its powers. It’s loud, it’s grand, it’s excessive — exactly what heavy metal was meant to be. And somewhere under all that noise, you can still feel the heartbeat of five tired musicians who refused to take a night off.
NWOBHM Heavy Metal
Rising from late-70s Britain, NWOBHM fused speed, melody, and raw energy into a new heavy-metal movement. By 1985 the genre had reached a global peak, with Iron Maiden leading the charge through epic songwriting, soaring vocals, and a theatrical live presence that reshaped metal’s identity.
Capitol Records – Cat#: SBBA-12441
Gatefold/FOC (Fold-Open Cover) with artwork and photos printed across the inside cover panels.
Includes custom inner sleeves with album details, lyrics, artwork/photos, and the original 12" colour booklet (USA edition).
Record Format: Double LP 12" Vinyl Stereo
Total Weight: 480g
1985 – USA
Long Beach Arena – Long Beach, USA
Hammersmith Odeon – London, UK
Capitol Records – USA
A double slab of live heavy metal, cut deep into four sides of vinyl. Drop the needle and the room shifts — crowd noise rising like warm static, stage lights flickering in your imagination. Old-school listening at its finest.
Note: Live energy varies by pressing — a little static, a little crowd noise, and a whole lot of magic.
This USA front-cover artwork for Live After Death bursts with electric chaos, capturing Iron Maiden’s undead mascot Eddie erupting from a shattered grave. His skeletal form is lit from within by streaks of neon-yellow energy, as if lightning is reanimating him straight from the underworld. His hair streams upward in a storm-blown halo, catching the bright white flash at the center of the image.
Eddie’s left wrist drags a broken chain, hinting at imprisonment or a violent resurrection, while his right arm rises defiantly. The cracked gravestone beside him carries a quote attributed to H.P. Lovecraft and an inscription marking Edward T.’s resting place, grounding the scene in dark, pulpy horror. Vivid green flames lick across the graveyard floor, mixing with cold blue shadows.
The background shows a storm-ridden sky carved in deep blues and blacks, crackling with lightning that frames the band’s bright yellow, sharp-edged logo. The album title, painted in distressed yellow script, hovers just below it. Trees, tombstones, and the uneven cemetery earth fade into darkness, amplifying the supernatural charge of the moment. The entire composition is classic Derek Riggs: dramatic, comic-book bold, and brimming with occult energy.
The USA back cover of Live After Death plunges the viewer into a vast, storm-charged cemetery washed in deep blue moonlight. Hundreds of gravestones scatter unevenly across the sloping ground, some cracked, others leaning, all partly swallowed by long, wind-torn grass that sweeps toward a distant glowing city. Each stone is rendered with gritty detail, some carrying playful inscriptions and hidden nods to longtime fans.
A massive full moon dominates the sky, casting harsh silver highlights over the graveyard and revealing the dark silhouette of a towering reaper figure holding an enormous scythe. Lightning forks through the clouds in sharp white branches, illuminating the skyline and giving the entire scene a theatrical, supernatural pulse. The city’s yellow-lit windows shimmer like heat, contrasting fiercely with the cold blue graveyard.
At the top, the entire tracklist for all four album sides is printed in bright yellow text, standing out like neon against the night sky. Beneath it, the production credit for Martin Birch marks his role in shaping the album’s sound. Down at ground level, a tombstone engraved with Here Lies Derek Riggs R.I.P. adds a cheeky signature from the artwork’s creator. The composition blends gothic menace, comic-book energy, and a sense of cinematic scale—perfectly mirroring the album’s legendary live performance captured on vinyl.
This inside gatefold panel explodes with heat, color, and sheer adrenaline, capturing Iron Maiden at full power during the World Slavery Tour. The collage is arranged in vivid blue-bordered frames, each one freezing a different moment of chaos: soaring flames, clouds of smoke, pounding lights, and musicians sprinting across the stage as if the set itself were a living creature.
Bruce Dickinson appears in one highlight shot, dramatically lifting a massive Union Jack as though leading an army into battle. In another, Adrian Smith and Dave Murray stand beneath a grid of stadium lights, their guitars slicing through thick smoke while the crowd below dissolves into silhouettes. Every image glows with molten reds and golds, giving the entire panel a furnace-like intensity.
To the right, a towering mummy version of Eddie dominates the scene, its bandaged arm stretching outward under blinding spotlights, reinforcing the album’s Egyptian-themed stage motif. Steve Harris lunges forward in several frames, bass in hand, his movement blurred by the speed and energy of the moment. Smaller photos reveal armor-like costumes, synchronized lighting bursts, and pyrotechnics erupting behind the musicians.
The whole composition feels like standing in the front row of a metal inferno—alive with noise, motion, and theatrical spectacle. It perfectly encapsulates Iron Maiden’s reputation for turning every stage into a mythological battlefield powered by lights, fire, and unstoppable musicianship.
This second inside gatefold panel turns the heat up even further, plunging the viewer into the blazing spectacle of Iron Maiden’s World Slavery Tour. A massive mummy version of Eddie dominates the left half of the composition, towering above the stage with outstretched arms and a jet of flame shooting from his head, casting fiery light across the scene.
Near Eddie’s feet, the drum kit erupts in bright gold illumination as Nicko McBrain hammers through the set. Egyptian-inspired stage structures rise behind the musicians, carved with hieroglyphic patterns that reinforce the tour’s grand mythological theme. The orange-and-yellow lighting palette makes the entire stage feel like a metal ritual unfolding inside a furnace.
In the collage of blue-bordered frames, each image captures a different burst of intensity: guitarists tearing through riffs beneath a geometric lighting grid, walls of fire igniting behind the band, and a monstrous creature costume looming menacingly over a guitarist engulfed in smoke. The contrast between vivid firelight and the cold blue borders gives the panel a kinetic, comic-book punch.
The bottom section widens out to show the whole stage bathed in blinding white beams as the crowd raises fists and hands in silhouette. Every detail pulses with motion, heat, and that unmistakable Iron Maiden theatricality—turning the inside of the gatefold into a living snapshot of one of metal’s most legendary tours.
This photograph presents an electrifying moment from Iron Maiden’s Live After Death era, arranged as a striking montage that fuses stage grandeur with fan-driven energy. The top section features the instantly recognizable Iron Maiden logo in sharp yellow lettering, glowing like a banner above the chaos and spectacle below.
At the center, bordered by a bright blue frame, the band performs on the colossal Egyptian-themed set of the Powerslave tour. Warm orange lights flood the sculpted backdrop, where a massive carved Pharaoh head looms over the drummer’s riser. Guitarists stand wide at stage left and right, frozen mid-stride, while the vocalist commands the spotlight from the front. Overhead trusses packed with lighting fixtures angle dramatically into the scene, adding weight and atmosphere.
The lower half erupts with a sea of fans pressed tightly together, cheering, reaching upward, and feeding off the music’s intensity. Faces glow with adrenaline and excitement, giving the composition a human counterbalance to the epic stage machinery above. The image captures not just a performance, but the shared surge of a band at its peak and a crowd fully alive in the moment.
This inner-sleeve photograph from Iron Maiden’s 1985 Capitol release of Live After Death captures the album’s dual spirit: high-energy spectacle on one side, and global touring ambition on the other. The left page explodes with a dramatic live shot framed in vivid blue, showing the band performing beneath the monumental Egyptian architecture of the Powerslave tour.
Warm orange lights pour over the carved Pharaoh mask towering behind the drummer. Guitarists anchor the stage edges, and the vocalist drives forward at the center, surrounded by intense beams of overhead light. A sea of fans crowds the bottom of the page, their expressions a mix of exhilaration, awe, and pure adrenaline.
The right page contrasts the chaos of live performance with strict, organized detail: a vertical block of yellow text lists the extensive tour itinerary, bordered by a colorful mosaic of flags from the many countries Iron Maiden visited. The bold reds, blues, greens, and whites form a visual map of the band’s international reach, reinforcing the scale of the tour behind this legendary 2LP live album.
This close-up photograph captures the Side One label from Iron Maiden’s 1985 USA Live After Death release on Capitol Records. The label is split between illustrated fantasy artwork and formal album text, creating a dramatic yet informative composition typical of Iron Maiden’s mid-1980s visual style.
On the left, Eddie’s chained skeletal arm erupts from the ground with lightning cutting through the artwork, merging seamlessly into the parchment-like panel on which the track titles are printed. The warm browns of the illustration contrast with the cooler blue textures that frame the right side of the label.
At the top, the Iron Maiden logo glows in yellow, followed by the album title in stylized lettering. Beneath it, the full Side One tracklist appears: Churchill’s Speech, Aces High, 2 Minutes to Midnight, The Trooper, Revelations, and Flight of Icarus. Production credits acknowledge Martin “Live Animal” Birch, along with 1985 copyright lines for EMI and Iron Maiden Holdings. The Capitol Records logo sits at the bottom above the “Side One” marking.
The surrounding black vinyl provides a sharp reflective border, while rim text wraps around the circumference, indicating manufacturing and legal notices. The label’s combination of vivid illustration, detailed credits, and bold typography encapsulates the look and feel of the original US pressing.