Iron Maiden – Run To The Hills · The Number Of The Beast

Cant find the made in Italy release that i have

The fourth EP in the First Ten Years series might possess one of the cooler, joint cover images, but the contents are largely a waste of time. Unlike many of the other releases in the collection, it features only four tracks total, and of these, there is but one song worth hearing. Honestly, there was not much point tracking down Run to the Hills/The Number of the Beast unless you're a completionist who needed the voucher for his boxed set to store the 10 EPs.

"Run to the Hills" is a great song, but it's the same song you already own on Number of the Beast. The B-side is "Total Eclipse", the only thing noteworthy on this EP, as I had mentioned. It's a decent, dark tune that arguably would have functioned perfectly well on the full-length, but I'm thankful that it exists at all. The Number of the Beast single is a little less enticing, with the title track from the album and a B-side live of "Remember Tomorrow" with Dickinson on the vocals (and frankly, I preferred Di'anno to what Bruce does here).

"Listen with Nicko!" IV is one of the less monkeyed monologues and has some interesting information about the video for "Run to the Hills", but he does start fucking around more in the end. I suppose to some this is the attraction, but I would have preferred something else, even packing 3 original singles onto each EP. The 'spring/mattress' joke is well...miserable. Alas, without "Total Eclipse", this would be utter rubbish. Of course, if you want the whole set, you've got to suck it up and take it like a man.