Bruce Dickinson
Anthology (DVD)

August 2006
Released: 2006, Sanctuary
Rating: 4.0/5
Reviewer: EvilG

As any Bruce or Maiden fan already knows, ANTHOLOGY is Bruce Dickinson’s first solo DVD release. It contains about six hours worth of videos, live performances, interviews, and previously unreleased and archive material. This 3 DVD set is something every fan should pick up, but buyer beware, the live video quality is not up to par with the high-quality Maiden standards. This can be explained by both the time period it was recorded and for the newer stuff by the fact that it is a good quality bootleg. It’s really too bad that a high quality pro-shot live performance wasn’t available, but for fans this is easily better than not having it at all. As well, the 3 DVD set is reasonably priced, checking in at about the same price of most single music DVD releases.



The highlight of the DVD 1 is seeing the gig from the TATTOOED MILLIONAIRE tour. It’s not well-filmed, but is decent. The bands performance shines through and it was cool to hear that line-up play songs like “Born In '58", “Hell On Wheels“, “No Lies”, and covering AC/DC’s classic “Sin City”. The SKUNKWORKS concert on this DVD looks a tad grainy and being from the Bruce-era where most figured he was going to leave metal behind, this is at times painful to watch. Some moments on the concert were ok like the live version of “Back From The Edge” but for the most part this is a snooze. Onto DVD 2, THE CHEMICAL WEDDING concert....as previously mentioned, this is basically a bootleg. It looks like it was filmed by recording what the large video screen displayed. Therefore, we get a sub-par picture and some inexcusable stuff like a camera zoomed in on Adrian while Roy is playing a solo, or vice-versa. The concert is great and all once you get past the picture imperfections. DVD 3 alone makes this nearly worth the price of the set as it contains all the Dickinson videos, many of which I’ve never seen before. The best part of this DVD, is that you can turn on the intro and get the behind the scenes story of each video before the video plays. The other highlight of DVD 3 is the lengthy interview with Bruce that delves into his latest album, song-writing, and influences. It would have been nice if the interview was a little longer with more information on Dickinson’s solo career. An added bonus is a short film that in essence serves as two Samson videos.



Despite some minor flaws, ANTHOLOGY is a great release that Dickinson fans will no doubt enjoy. I hope that there will be another DVD release in the next couple years with a better quality and longer concert, but all thing considered, this DVD is a must have.