Iron Maiden beer stopped over skull label concerns

“There has been a discussion about the label. The alcohol law stipulates how it can look. We therefore don’t yet know when it can be launched,” said Therese Elmgren at Systembolaget to the Aftonbladet daily.

The label on the beer’s packaging is taken from the UK rockers’ single The Trooper which was released in 1983.

The Local reported last month that a brewery in Denmark was forced to change the label on its Lust beer after the Systembolaget deemed the depiction of a topless women to be too sexy for Sweden.

The beer is part of a seven-part Sinner Series, from Danish brewers Amager Bryghus, with each of the sins represented by a cartoon image on different bottles.

But Sweden’s state-run liquor retailer decided that the picture on the Lust bottle, which contains a sweet Belgian ale with a 9.2 percent alcohol content, did not abide by Sweden’s alcohol etiquette.

“We can’t accept the label, it’s against Sweden’s alcohol laws,” Systembolaget spokesman Lennart Agén told The Local at the time.

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