The two disc’s highlights are the best tracks from the band’s last four efforts, with the best of the material culling from Brave New World. Not surprisingly, considering the context, even the sub par albums like Fear of the Dark, No Prayer for the Dying―and my personal hell―The Final Frontier are all featured. As was already mentioned, Blaze Bayley gets completely thrown out of the picture as the songs “The Clansman”, “Man on the Edge” and “Sign of the Cross” (from Virtual XI and The X Factor) are all sung by Dickinson. A shame and a questionable attempt to whitewash history. Poor guy. “Tail Gunner”, a live version of “Fear of the Dark”, “Be Quick or be Dead”, “Bring Your Daughter to the Slaughter” and “Holy Smoke” comprise the rest of the 1990-1999 era.

Essentially though, From Here to Eternity: The Best of 1990-2010 is a cliff notes of the band’s much ballyhooed reunion with Dickinson from 2000 and on. They’ve done a good job of selecting the standouts from those albums. From Brave New World you get “The Wickerman”, personal fave “Blood Brothers” and the title track “Brave New World”. From Dance of Death you get that album’s clear winner “Paschendale” as well as “Rainmaker”, “No More Lies” and “Dance of Death”. A Matter of Life and Death is represented by “Different World (lame choice in my opinion), “The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg”, and by the excellent duo of “For the Greater Good of God” and “These Colors Don’t Run”.

I’m not sure about the need for any tracks from 2010’s The Final Frontier ―”Coming Home”, “El Dorado” and “When the Wild Wind Blows”―not because I personally didn’t care for the album, but because  it only came out a year ago. Guess they wanted a nice set of numbers; 1990-2010. Anyway. Here they are, trying to force it upon us one more time.  At least they included “El Dorado”, but they missed a chance to put “The Alchemist” on here instead of one of those two other wandering, aimless tracks.

That being said, From Here to Eternity: The Best of 1990-2010 does what compilations are meant to do, ie. take all the best stuff and put it on one handy release. For the most part it’s a successful feature and one of the few worthwhile Iron Maiden compilations the band has churned out over the years. But as with any compilation, most real fans will already have the source material and this is merely doubling up on most, if not all the tracks.

However, maybe I have reason to sell my copy on The Final Frontier now…