Shirt Stains: Iron Maiden Un-Cooler
Chillers
Did you hear? Iron Maiden is putting out a new album! Maybe. It’s a little hard to tell from this teaser for something called “Belshazzar’s Feast”. Personally, I’m hoping for a live performance/stage show like Raising Hell, but this is about Salò. Until we get the official word (and are inevitably disappointed at the final product), fans must satiate their undying lust for one of metal’s biggest bands. They need something. Anything. Lucky for them, Iron Maiden has something real ‘cool’ to buy.
An official Iron Maiden Igloo cooler. That’s…nice. I guess. Maybe you really need to let the other families at the beach know that you have a good record collection. Can’t let anyone think for even a second that you might not up the irons. A plain old red Igloo cooler that most everyone reading this inherited form their parents just won’t cut it. This one’s big so you can fit all your bottles of Trooper beer in it. Maybe some sandwiches or fruit. Or…ummm…insulin. Got to make sure that stays cold, right? Heh heh….ehhhhhhh.
Look, it’s just an Igloo cooler with an Iron Maiden sticker on it. There’s not much else to it. As metal bands get older, touring gets more sparse, and album sales dip, they have to come up with new revenue streams. It probably doesn’t help that frontman Bruce Dickinson dove dick-first into ̶M̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶B̶r̶i̶t̶a̶i̶n̶ ̶G̶r̶e̶a̶t̶ ̶A̶g̶a̶i̶n̶ Brexit is now real mad that it’s biting him and his industry in the ass.
So what is a band to do? Slap your name, art, and logo on whatever you can and collect those sweet, sweet royalty checks. We can call this the KISS-ification. More like PISS-ification, amirite? Will people really buy a plain-old Igloo cooler that you can get at almost any sporting goods or big box store just because it has some Iron Maiden art on it?
Yes. Yes they will.
