Description

Polish pressed music cassette. Clear cassette with blue paper label. I love the fact that the Lazer Music version of the album is called No Player For The Dying.

Poland is probably the country that had the most record labels in the world that only released cassettes. But even though there were lots of labels the market was still small as they only printed these for their own market inside of Poland. And a label in one town maybe lacked the distribution for another town and so on. A Warzaw or Krakow label might print more copies of a tape then labels from a smaller town. So even if there are thousands of releases you will notice how rare some are if you start to try to list the catalogue number of one particular label. Some cassettes just rarely shows up. Anyway one theese many Polish labels were Laser Music based in Chorzow Batory an hour drive from Krakow. The label released approx 1300 tapes up to 1994.

With their first album of the ’90s, Iron Maiden wanted to return to basics. Comparable to their more straightforward early work, No Prayer for the Dying quickly shot up the charts all over the world, but it was clear that the songwriting wasn’t up to snuff when compared to such classics as Killers or Number of the Beast. The album also signaled the debut of new guitarist Janick Gers, best known for his stint in Ian Gillan’s solo band and on Bruce Dickinson’s solo album, Tattooed Millionaire. Featuring a pair of U.K. hit singles — the anti-televangelist diatribe “Holy Smoke” and Maiden’s lone number one, the controversial “Bring Your Daughter…to the Slaughter” (which was banned by the BBC) — plus another that should have been issued as a single (the opener, “Tailgunner”), No Prayer as a whole doesn’t measure up to the hits. The title track contains an opening too reminiscent of their 1988 single “Infinite Dreams,” while other tracks such as “Fates Warning,” “Run Silent Run Deep,” and “Hooks in You” never catch fire. And even though the epic closer “Mother Russia,” “Public Enema Number One,” and “Fates Warning” are standouts, they just don’t hold up well when compared to past classics. While Maiden retained their solid following elsewhere in the world, No Prayer for the Dying would prove to be their last gold-certified album in the U.S.

Track list:
1. Tail Gunner
2. Moly Smoke (Holy Smoke)
3. No Player For The Dying (No Prayer For The Dying)
4. Public Enema Number One (Public Enemy Number One)
5. Mother Russia
6. Fates Warning
7. The Assasin (The Assassin)
8. Run Silent Run Deep
9. Hooks In You
10. Bring Your Daughter… To The Slaughter