Iron Maiden Storm Zagreb Again to Open the Final Leg of the ‘Legacy of the Beast’ Tour!
where: Zagreb / Arena / Croatia
when: Sunday, 22 May 2022
Finally. After two postponements of the final leg of the “Legacy Of The Beast” tour, and with the intervening release of the new studio album “Senjutsu” (2021, RockLine review), heavy metal giants Iron Maiden have at long last returned to the stage. They were, at last, finally allowed to do so again. That said, some further date reshuffling along the way — including the sacrifice of the Kyiv and Moscow stops (no need to spell out why) — unfortunately couldn’t be avoided this time either.
Iron Maiden apparently haven’t visited Slovenia since 2007, though they do tend to stop somewhere very close to our borders on pretty much every tour. After their last two visits to Trieste, in 2018 (RockLine concert review) and 2016 (RockLine concert review), it was Zagreb once again riding to our rescue this time around.
An Iron Maiden tour is, simply put, one giant heavy metal party. Vehicles packed with fans dressed in black T-shirts had been descending on the Croatian capital all day from every direction imaginable — European and beyond. Any self-respecting hard rock fan from Slovenia simply couldn’t miss this. And many went further: those who could also blocked out Tuesday, 24 May 2022, and bolted all the way to Belgrade for the next Iron Maiden show.
Enough preamble. It was well past eight in the evening and the arena was buzzing. Support act Lords of the Lost — deliberately skipped by our car of three die-hard Iron Maiden devotees — had wrapped up, and it was time to push forward toward the stage into the so-called ‘fan pit’. The machine runs like clockwork, and just after nine the lights went down. The instrumental Transylvania, followed by the expected UFO classic Doctor Doctor, cranked up the temperature in what was a near sell-out anthill of a venue — capacity around 22,000 — as the sounds of the intro to the main set kicked in. The initially dim lighting revealed a brand new backdrop transporting us to the Land of the Rising Sun, and one by one the familiar six figures appeared on stage.
Zagreb got a world premiere of the new album with a three-song run of Senjutsu, Stratego, and The Writing On the Wall, with Iron Maiden bringing out Eddie in his brand new ‘samurai’ guise during the latter. The new album had been out nearly a year by that point, and it was high time it got its live airing. As is well known, the sound at Maiden shows gets calibrated over the first few songs — and so it was again here. After The Writing On the Wall, by far the best-received of the three new tracks, the stage set transformed completely. The ‘Legacy of the Beast’ backdrop took over, and Iron Maiden carried on with Revelations, which had evidently swapped places in the setlist with Where Eagles Dare for this occasion — the latter having been a fixture across the earlier legs of the ‘Legacy Of The Beast’ tour. The ‘fresh updates’ to the beast’s legacy continued when the band brought back Blood Brothers, before which the long-haired ‘vocal Moses’ of metal Bruce Dickinson, with a sensational address to the crowd, had the whole arena eating out of his hand (again).
From there it was all old-school ‘legacy of the beast’ territory, except the band had given the career highlight reel a thorough shuffle. That applied to the encore section too, which now featured two slots — especially the second, which on previous legs of the same tour had served as their opening. Yes. Aces High closing things out this time — sadly the only track from “Powerslave” on offer, landing with an inflatable Spitfire looming overhead in the very finale of the evening.
The band is in great shape. Men well into their sixties keeping up the on-stage drive, a degree of goofiness, and sheer playfulness — even if we’ve all known for ages that it’s driven, more than anything, by money and routine. But they played brilliantly. Truly brilliantly. Iron Maiden remain a live machine that just keeps grinding. Bruce is always the first question mark when you talk about where the band is at right now, but the man delivered another flawless performance. He sang at the very top of his game.
The sheer scale of the Iron Maiden live spectacle just keeps growing. Year on year the stage production gets richer, more varied. Each song has its own backdrop, and in recent years Maiden have been wheeling out three different Eddies on stage. The second one greeted us during a ferocious run through The Number of the Beast, while the third came out swinging a sword during The Trooper. Dickinson changed his outfit for every song. During Fear of the Dark he prowled the stage in a top hat with a lantern in hand; during Flight Of The Icarus he went full Rammstein, waving flamethrowers around; during The Trooper, as you probably already know, he came out in British guardsman gear waving a Croatian flag; during Hallowed Be Thy Name he was a ragged prisoner flanked by a gallows on stage; and during Sign Of The Cross he swept in wearing the black cloak of a bloodthirsty inquisitor. In short — the Iron Maiden concert experience has grown, over the years, into a colossal, colossal spectacle. All of it backed by dramatic blasts and shooting flames (The Number of the Beast, Flight Of Icarus) and pyrotechnics (Sign Of The Cross).
What is there to say at the end? It always comes around way too quickly. The closing Iron Maiden arrives too soon — and playing it is always more bittersweet than joyful, because you know the only thing left is the mandatory encore. The one quibble with an otherwise thoroughly thrilling encounter with these heavy metal giants is the decision to include The Clansman in the encore. Not the performance itself — that was fine — but the choice to put it there at all. The encore should be reserved for eighties classics. Two genuine gems from that era in the whole Maiden discography got the short end of the stick as a result: “Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son” and “Somewhere In Time” went completely unrepresented in the setlist. Though thankfully, the band also managed to ignore every album released after “Brave New World”.
An Iron Maiden concert remains a one-of-a-kind experience. Even for people who don’t listen to metal, catching at least one show by this band is, honestly, a life obligation. Going by what was on display, the story of one of heavy metal’s defining bands is far from over. The metal celebration in Zagreb with Iron Maiden was also a gathering of kindred spirits that broke down every barrier we’ve been conditioned into since kindergarten — national ones included. In that arena, we all became one again. A true brotherhood. Brothers and sisters. Waves of positive energy crashed back and forth, and the crowd went absolutely wild. When someone who’s been to a good dozen Maiden concerts in their lifetime — the ‘chronicler of these lines’ — keeps experiencing these same intense feelings time after time, a state of positive, somehow genuinely authentic vibes like this brings them right back to feeling like it’s their very first encounter with heavy metal royalty.
The final leg of the ‘Legacy of the Beast’ tour has confirmed that Iron Maiden are still in very good shape — and, not least given the opening section of the Zagreb show, that this tour will soon be followed by another one dedicated to promoting “Senjutsu”. If anyone reading this feels like they’re missing out, there’s still a chance for redemption on 10 July 2022, when the band plays in Wiener Neustadt, a good 300 km from Ljubljana.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos 1–12 & 15: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos 13, 14 & 16–20: Edita Klemen
Setlist:
1. Senjutsu
2. Stratego
3. The Writing on the Wall
4. Revelations
5. Blood Brothers
6. Sign of the Cross
7. Flight of Icarus
8. Fear of the Dark
9. Hallowed Be Thy Name
10. The Number of the Beast
11. Iron Maiden
—encore 1—
12. The Trooper
13. The Clansman
14. Run to the Hills
—encore 2—
15. Churchill’s Speech (pre-recorded intro)
16. Aces High
