Several months had already passed since Iron Maiden announced they would be kicking off their colossal new The Future Past tour right here in Slovenia, and after the whooping celebrations that followed, Arena Stožice sold out in record time. But the surprises for Iron Maiden fan club members in Slovenia kept on coming. First, Bruce Dickinson stopped by Cankarjev dom in March for the Jon Lord – Concerto for Group and Orchestra event, and then, on the eve of D-Day, Steve Harris rolled into Ljubljana’s Cvetličarna with his British Lion. The Cvetličarna parking lot on that sunny Saturday afternoon told you everything you needed to know; the crowd decked out in Iron Maiden t-shirts, which later nicely filled the hall, could hardly wait to experience maestro Harris up close on a small stage.
British Lion has several support acts rotating throughout the tour, not all of whom play every date. For the first night of the tour, DarkTribe joined the English lads in Ljubljana. In the opening moments of their set, judging by their look and their clichéd power metal, it was perfectly reasonable to guess they might be from our western neighbor — but no. Close, though: DarkTribe hail from the south of France, specifically from Nice on the French Riviera. DarkTribe did their warm-up job well enough, but their music is unfortunately just a completely unoriginal Stratovarius clone, and they sound every bit as generic. From catchy but instantly forgettable choruses, to a posturing guitarist with Bor Zuljan vibes, serving up totally by-the-book power metal solos and utterly unremarkable riffs, to an overly enthusiastic frontman who — despite the heat inside Cvetličarna — was wearing a hoodie, which he even pulled up over his head multiple times. Bottom line: a band that was forgotten the moment they stepped off the stage, having won over only a handful of, well, Italian enthusiasts.
But the truth of the matter is that the reason for attending Saturday’s concert was one thing and one thing only — Steve Harris, one of the biggest names in metal bass. Yeah, who would’ve thought a bassist could ever overshadow the vocalist or even the band itself, but with British Lion it’s absolutely the case, as was made crystal clear by the sea of Iron Maiden shirts on locals, Italians, and even South Americans alike. Not every country gets the honor of hosting the first night of an Iron Maiden tour (only one can, of course), and a good number of visitors had descended on Slovenia for the occasion. But let’s get back to British Lion, who, hand on heart, would struggle to pull much more than their own family members to a show without Harris. The guys play classic hard rock with a modern edge, which sounds perfectly fine instrumentally — the two guitarists handle their duties confidently and competently, and Harris’s bass rattling is omnipresent as always. Unfortunately, though, the band falls badly short when it comes to Richard Taylor’s vocals, which come across as weak, unexciting, flat, and completely devoid of any spark of energy. At times he sounds like a really, really bad version of Chris Cornell; more generally, he’s a frontman with no notable charisma, and it’s obvious the only one stealing the show is Steve Harris himself. He owned every inch of that stage, visibly relishing the intimacy of the smaller venue and the closer connection with the crowd, singing along to every single song from first verse to last. British Lion do deserve credit, though — they were on stage for nearly an hour and a half and played virtually everything they have from their two albums, which live actually sound much better than on the studio recordings, with the singalong Legend standing out as the strongest moment of the night.
Even if I probably won’t be spinning British Lion all that often, Saturday evening was a perfectly satisfying night out — and above all, a lovely warm-up for Sunday’s spectacle.
Photographs: Nina Grad
