Last night I saw my heavy metal heroes Iron Maiden in concert for the second time. The last time I saw them was two years ago on the "Somewhere Back In Time" tour. That tour consisted exclusively of older songs and was meant as a tribute to the historic "World Slavery" tour from 1984-85. For me, this time around started out much the same way that the last trip did. The show was at the White River Amphitheater in Auburn, WA - which is about a four-and-a-half hour drive from where I live. My friend and I left at around 11:30 and got to the Auburn SuperMall at about 4:00. The SuperMall serves as a rendezvous point where concert-goers can park and take school busses to the venue for free. This helps to free up what would undoubtedly be a traffic nightmare on the single lane residential roadways leading to the venue.
We got off the bus at about 5:30 and stood in line for almost another hour before the gates opened. We went inside and I bought this t-shirt:
After that, we hurried up to the lawn to secure our spots against the forward fence (which are not bad seats for only $30.00, but you have to get there way early). Another hour went by before the show started at 7:22pm with the opening band, Dream Theater.
What can I say about Dream Theater? Hmmmm. They just don't do ANYTHING for me. Each member of the band is extremely talented, but they simply seem incapable of writing a single piece of music that I am interested in listening to. Their music seems to be all about technical precision at the expense of any type of emotional cathartic release. Musical masturbation in the purest sense of the phrase - a lot of fun for them but not much fun for anyone else. Anyway, the metal gods were merciful and their set only lasted until 8:15.
After about 30 minutes of set changing, it started.
The symphonic intro music blasted and the black curtain fell to reveal a spaceship themed stage set up - complete with lunar towers and a black backdrop full of illuminated stars. Red lights shined and swirled all around and just as the symphonic music crescendoed, Adrian Smith ran onto the stage and hit the opening E power chords to kick off "The Wickerman" from 2001's Brave New World album. It's a really tough song to beat for an opener.
Right away I could tell that there were some mixing issues. The guitars were a bit loud and the vocals were kind of buried, but by the end of the song the mix seemed to be ironed out (forgive the pun). The overall sound was a just a bit muddy and distorted, though, which is really my only complaint about the whole evening. The last time I saw them, the sound was immaculate, so I guess my expectations might have been a bit high. Oh well.
Ok, onto the rest of the set.
They followed up "The Wickerman" with "The Ghost of The Navigator" which was a bit of a risky move considering that the two songs appear in the same order on their studio album and on the subsequent Rock In Rio live album from that tour.
Next was "Wrathchild" from the 1981 Killers album.
At this point, Bruce Dickinson (vocals) greeted us all and introduced the next song as the only one they would be playing off their forthcoming release The Final Frontier. The song was called "El Dorado," and it was released a few weeks ago as a free download on the band's website, so most of us were at least somewhat familiar with it. It is a pretty heavy tune and rocked everyone in the house.
They continued with the World War 1 inspired epic "Paschendale" off of 2003's Dance of Death. I was especially excited to see this song live since it is one of my favorites from that album.
Next came a pair of songs from 2006's A Matter of Life and Death, which I consider to be their best studio album since singer Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith reunited with the band back in 2000. The first song was the immensely heavy epic "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Bregg," and the second was the anthemic "These Colours Don't Run."
At this time, Bruce had a little chat with us about how much the band appreciated the near-capacity crowd that had come out to see them, and compared Iron Maiden fans to one big family. He then dedicated "Blood Brothers," another track from Brave New World, to the memory of Ronnie James Dio, who died of cancer recently.
Next the band launched into two more songs from Dance of Death: The completely upbeat "Wildest Dreams," followed by a very intense version of "No More Lies."
The title track to Brave New World was next, which is another one of my personal favorites, followed by the title track to 1992's Fear of the Dark - which is ALWAYS a crowd-pleaser.
Alas, at this point, it was time for the normal set to end and the band, as usual, did that by playing the song named for themselves, "Iron Maiden," off of their self-titled 1980 debut. During this song, the new version of the band's mascott, Eddie, came out onstage. Each tour features a 10-12 foot version of the ghoulish rogue coming onstage and messing around with the band. This time - in keeping with the sci-fi theme of the new album - he was made to look a lot like one of the creatures from the Ridley Scott "Alien" movies. As an added bonus, toward the end of his stint onstage, they gave him a white Fender Stratocaster and he appeared to be playing guitar with the band. With the end of the song, Bruce told us all goodnight and the band exited.
After a very (refreshingly) short pause, the lights dimmed again and we all heard an eerie deep voice boom "Woe to you, O Earth and sea! For the devil sends the beast with wrath, because he knows the time is short..." - the familiar introductory bible verses for the classic title track to the 1982 powerhouse The Number of the Beast. I'd seen them perform this song on the last tour, and this time it was no less electrifying. It was as if everyone in the amphitheater had suddenly been given a Red-Bull enema.
The place was set ablaze with excitement, which continued into the next track (from the same album) the iconic "Hallowed Be Thy Name."
Finally, the band closed with one of my all time favorites from the first album: "Running Free." It was a great moment!
All in all I have to say that Iron Maiden continue to perform at the top of their game. They defy the laws of aging, and their music will live on for a very long time to come. If you've never listened to them and would like to know just what the heck I'm talking about, just hit me up and I'll point you in the right direction. I would like to see as many Iron Maiden fans in the world as possible, so I try to do anything I can to make that happen.
Thanks for reading this, as always.
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