A Matter Of Life And Death  by Iron Maiden

Three years after their previous discographic work, Iron Maiden return in 2006 with the fourteenth album of their long career. The lineup of the band members remains the same six musicians as in their two previous albums, while the musical style of A Matter Of Life And Death belongs to heavy metal with many progressive metal elements. The album production was done by Kevin Shirley.

The album opens with Different World, a composition by Adrian Smith and Steve Harris, which played the role of the second and last single of the album, while the first single was The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg. Benjamin Breeg was a fictional hero about whom we know he was born on September 3, 1939, the day the United Kingdom, France, Australia, and New Zealand declared war on Germany following the latter's invasion of Poland two days earlier. Thus, judging by the album cover, we can easily understand that the main theme of the song lyrics is war, while there are also songs that touch on themes related to religion, such as Pilgrim.

The success of A Matter Of Life And Death was remarkable and is rightly considered one of the most complete and interesting albums of the band after 2000. The album entered the Top-10 in almost all European countries, while the same happened in the U.S., reaching No. 9 on the Billboard, an achievement that no previous album of the British had reached across the Atlantic until then.