Author: Urban Bolta
Venue: Arena Zagreb / Zagreb / Croatia
Concert date: July 31, 2013
Attendance: 16,000
Ticket price: €19 – €50
Almost exactly ten years after their last visit to Zagreb, the band most responsible for popularizing heavy metal returned to the Croatian capital on Wednesday – the mighty Iron Maiden were back! If Black Sabbath charted heavy metal’s path way back when, and Judas Priest then defined it more sharply, it was ultimately Iron Maiden who, with their mix of catchiness, melody and punch, managed to bring this once-obscure genre to the masses worldwide.
A decade ago the Iron Maidens played the capital of our southern neighbor on the Dance of Death promo tour, but this time the trip to the city on the Sava was even more tempting – Maiden played Zagreb as part of the reprise of the 1988 / 89 Maiden United tour, when they were at the very peak of their creative zenith. A wet dream for any (young) Iron Maiden fanatic, in other words. Especially considering it’s 2013, no less. The show went down at Arena Zagreb. Given that the British Maidens usually draw around ten, maybe twelve thousand people to their solo shows in our region, the Arena is a pretty big venue. But with Croatia’s recent entry into the European Union, the promoter halved ticket prices for a week, so a precious slip of paper was available from a modest €19 in early July. Cheap enough that the Arena, with a capacity of almost twenty thousand, was bursting at the seams by half past eight in the evening!
But before the main event of the night, the stage belonged to the warm-up acts. First up were London hard rockers Voodoo Six, whom I missed entirely thanks to the early start. No big deal, it would have been worse to miss the set by legendary New York thrash metallers Anthrax, who played the Zagreb show as the support act exclusively. Only and solely in Zagreb. They spiced up their school-hour-long set with eighties classics. Their ranks were temporarily filled out by Jonathan Donais after guitarist Rob Caggiano left (he went off to the Danes Volbeat), and behind the kit, in place of Charlie, who was held back in America by family business, sat drummer of venerable renown Jon Dette. Despite the lineup changes, it’s clear that Anthrax always represent their name credibly, as long as the front line on stage is held by guitarist and bandleader Ian Scott and the lanky frontman of Native American roots, Joey Belladona. The latter didn’t put a feather headdress on his head during the war dance of Indians, as he usually does, but with his lived-in vocal performance and his jumping all the way to the edge of the stage, he was still the most dynamic ingredient of the band’s show this time. After Efilnikufesin (N.F.L.) and Joe Jackson’s Got The Time came Fight ‘Em ‘Til You Can’t, the only track from their newer material that Anthrax included in the set this time. And then, a bomb! Their cover of the AC/DC anthem T.N.T. blew up the floor and the entire stands, and served as a teaser for the true mass catharsis that Maiden would stage later. On the wings of the great response to the last two songs, I Am The Law and Antisocial, Anthrax tore around the stage too, but despite the excellent rating of the set, a bitter aftertaste lingers: with such a mighty treasury of unforgettable hits of their own, they filled the setlist with as many as three covers, instead of treating the sweat-soaked, ripped-up crowd of Arena Zagreb to one more evergreen of their own.
In the time before the stars of the night took the stage, the hall filled up to the last corner. The air was charged with electricity, which was only amplified by the playing of the UFO classic Doctor Doctor, the opener of every Maiden concert. Right on kicking into the opening track Moonchild, bassist Steve Harris and the guitar trio of Dave Murray / Adrian Smith / Janick Gers took up positions right at the edge of the stage and, with that non-verbal communication, started to grab the audience in the claws of the Iron Maiden machine. Even though Maiden cultivate direct contact with the crowd only in the form of Dickinson’s occasional addresses, the cooperation between band and audience is fruitful the whole way through. After four decades of career, the old tomcats have simply learned how to please a crowd of thousands below the stage!
After Can I Play With Madness, the first peak of the show arrived with The Prisoner. As a band that’s permanently on the pedestal, Iron Maiden have to offer fans interesting little treats from tour to tour so they don’t lose interest in coming to their shows, which is why they turn to thematically and conceptually different tours, and they deserve all the praise for it. The next highlight came in the form of Afraid to Shoot Strangers from the Fear of the Dark album, and only somewhere around then did the folks at the mixing desk manage to solve the riddle of the catastrophic sound, which in the early stage of the show was beneath all criticism. Harris’s bass line was overly thickened, while the triple guitar attack was far too muddy. Sound quality often depends on where the listener is standing, but this time the criticism of the sound engineer could be heard from every corner of the hall. Considering that the hall has previously hosted such an eminent guest as Roger Waters (ex-Pink Floyd), the Arena obviously has good acoustic predispositions, so when it comes to sound, Maiden earn a big black mark, which luckily was the only one of the evening.
During The Trooper, with Dickinson’s standard routine of running around the stage with a Union Jack in his hands, most of the crowd probably tasted the new beer from Maiden’s own brand creeping up their throats, though it quickly went flat in the express tempo of The Number of the Beast and Phantom of the Opera. The visual component is an important part of Maiden’s overall stage image. The stage construction was tailor-made above all for the crazy pilot Bruce Dickinson, who, despite ever more wrinkles on his face, remains the eternal executioner of excess calories. In the middle of the walkway that wrapped around and connected both parts of the stage, none other than the ever-smiling Nicko McBrain reigned, the oldest member of the famous heavy metal sextet, though judging by what we saw he too has plenty of strength left, so there’s no need to worry about the future of the Iron Maiden ship yet. The backdrops changed constantly in step with the themes of the songs being played, and the light shows were adapted to the atmospheric twists and the building of the mood, which was hellish from the first second of the concert and only kept growing minute by minute as the »hit after hit« show unfolded! Wasted Years, with an Adrian Smith solo spot in the lead role, served as the intro to the peak of the night, the epic Seventh Son of A Seventh Son, when the evil-eyed Eddie, just like the one on the cover of that legendary 1988 album, took over the blue-draped stage. Dickinson egged the crowd on several times with the trademark shout »scream for me, Zagreb«, even though to the strains of The Clairvoyant, Fear of the Dark and Iron Maiden it wouldn’t have needed any extra motivation at all!
»Run, live to fly, fly to live…« echoed from thousands of throats during yet another classic, Aces High, with which Maiden opened the closing part of the concert. They almost drowned out Dickinson, who, despite being tired, sailed through the last minutes of the show vocally well, and the same goes for the hyperactive Harris and Gers on the right, while Murray and Smith on the left side of the stage traditionally lagged behind their colleagues in sheer dynamics. The somewhat more demanding The Evil That Men Do was a real treat for the band’s more devoted followers, and for the farewell Maiden hit us with the punky Running Free.
With the Maiden United tour, Iron Maiden prove that over the years they’ve grown into the best-organized heavy metal outfit on the planet in every department. The polished stage design, the tightness and the heart in the right place only added to the spectacle of the tour itself in Zagreb. They obviously aren’t running out of steam yet, so we can already look forward to their further projects. One of them is reportedly a new studio album. By the way, can you believe it’s already been three years since the release of »The Final Frontier«…?
Setlist
ANTHRAX:
1. Caught in a Mosh
2. Indians
3. Efilnikufesin (N.F.L.)
4. Got the Time
5. Fight ‘Em ‘Til You Can’t
6. T.N.T.
7. I Am the Law
8. Antisocial
IRON MAIDEN:
1. Moonchild
2. Can I Play With Madness
3. The Prisoner
4. 2 Minutes to Midnight
5. Afraid to Shoot Strangers
6. The Trooper
7. The Number of the Beast
8. Phantom of the Opera
9. Run to the Hills
10. Wasted Years
11. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
12. The Clairvoyant
13. Fear of the Dark
14. Iron Maiden
— encore –
15. Aces High
16. The Evil That Man Do
17. Running Free
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