Iron Maiden decided to film a concert DVD back last year when From Fear to Eternity came out, set in South America, during The Final Frontier World Tour. For those of you who have been waiting eagerly, the concert DVD has been filmed and will be released on March 27 in the US and Canada, and March 26 for the rest of the world.
The band decided to use the performance from Santiago, Chile, in which the band performed in front of 55,000 people, for the upcoming double-disc concert DVD. The DVD will also be released on Blu-Ray, and the audio will be used for a soundtrack album. You'll be able to download both, the DVD and the soundtrack, digitally on the Internet as well.
Steve Harris, Maiden's bassist and founder, writes:
"For The Final Frontier Tour it was really important to me that we filmed in South America as we're always so overwhelmed by the fans' reaction when we go to that part of the world and I wanted to reflect that in the filming. After much consideration we chose the Santiago show as we felt it was one of our best performances of the entire Tour and to play at the prestigious Estadio Nacional was a landmark moment for us. For reasons known to our fans, it took a long time before we got to play our first show in Chile, and once we did get to play a show, the response was so phenomenal we just had to keep coming back and it's got better and better each time!
If you have been keeping up with Iron Maiden, you'll know that the band's long-time mascot, Ed the Head, was sort of misdirected during transit when a couple of shows in Japan were cancelled. Luckily, he found his way back to the band in South America, and makes a "literally jaw dropping" appearance during the Santiago show.
While the first disc is 120 minutes of performance footage, the second disc features an 88-minute documentary called Behind the Beast, where the band's crew documented the preparation of the world tour and Iron Maiden makes it all work. The documentary also shows prominent footage of Ed Force One, the band's custom Boeing 747 airplane that vocalist Bruce Dickinson flies himself.