Iron Maiden (support: The Raven Age)
Tuesday, 30 May 2023
Prague / O2 Arena / Czech Republic
Iron Maiden on a new tour! Catching at least one show is practically a moral obligation. One of the most important bands in the history of spreading metal across the planet, and they still can’t get enough of the road. The group that stands as metal’s great lighthouse of inspiration has pulled an interesting move for this run — one that concerns the setlist and, by extension, the staging, blending a sense of nostalgia with the unmistakable message that the story of these metal giants is nowhere near finished.
The current studio album »Senjutsu« (2021, RockLine review), which got its first live outing in the closing stretch of the »Legacy of the Beast« tour (we first checked out the new songs live when we visited Zagreb on 22 May 2022), is now being promoted further on yet another world tour. But this time they haven’t stuck to the usual formula — where new tracks make up at least a third of the set while the remaining two-thirds is best-of standards. Instead, the band chose to give a substantial share of the setlist to »Somewhere In Time« (1986, RockLine review), an album regarded by many fans — and by music lovers with no particular tribal allegiance to the band — as one of the creative peaks of their entire career. The tour, fittingly named »The Future Past«!
Much like in 1986, when the »Somewhere On Tour« run kicked off in what was then our shared country — with the third show in the sequence taking place in Ljubljana — Maiden decided to open this new tour in Ljubljana as well. Well before the first concert, they had been warming up in Split, and then Harris played a show with his British Lion at Ljubljana’s Cvetličarna the night before the tour officially began — so that we finally got to see the legends again (after their visit to Plečnik Stadium back in June 2007). Nearly a full sixteen years without a show in Slovenia. Dr. ProgRock has already written at length about all of this in his concert review of the Ljubljana show for RockLine.
Given how intense the concert schedule across the old continent was getting, it made perfect sense to hop over to the Czech Republic as well. Especially if you wanted to catch Iron Maiden two nights in a row and combine a two-week stay in the Czech Republic with shows by Mötley Crüe, Def Leppard, Scorpions, and Kiss — all spaced a few days apart. And that’s exactly the decision that was made. And lest anyone think otherwise: we weren’t the only Slovenians who made the trip to see Iron Maiden in the Czech Republic.
The first of the two sold-out shows presented the band in a noticeably more relaxed mood than what we’d experienced in Ljubljana two days earlier. The band knew they’d be sleeping in Prague after this one — no packing up and driving to the next city. And more than that: the following day they even had a friendly football match organized, with band members and crew going up against veterans of Prague’s Slavia football club. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Showtime. People are streaming from every direction toward the entrances of the enormous O2 Arena, which swallows around 18,000 people into its belly. Out in the arena’s courtyard, the band had set up a marquee selling official merch, which nicely took some of the pressure off the merch stands inside. The entire parade of fans crossing the arena’s forecourt — the outdoor plaza and the entrance area — was accompanied by megaphone preaching from a long-bearded character who apparently felt called to save people from attending concert events associated with heresy and the general practice of satanic customs and habits. He was grotesque, yet utterly determined — sign in hand, megaphone blazing, the real Jesus practically erupting out of him. The Czech crowd, though, seemed thoroughly used to him: he drew waves of laughter from the passers-by. At one point he even came across as oddly endearing, and you’d almost have offered him a ticket to Iron Maiden — except the man would have taken that as an outright provocation.
We’re inside. The Raven Age have finished their set, and the fever building toward Iron Maiden is rising fast. Five tracks from »Somewhere In Time« make up a full third of this tour’s setlist — and Alexander the Great, for many fans one of the finest songs Iron Maiden have ever written, is the absolute magnet of the evening: a song that simply has to be experienced live, since the band had never performed it at their shows before this tour.
Iron Maiden still owed their fans after the Ljubljana show, where there were plenty of slip-ups. And Nicko — has he forgotten, or can he simply not be bothered anymore to play those drum rolls that define the character of the studio originals on »Somewhere In Time«? Since this is the first of two concert reviews from our Prague visit, it’s worth drawing some quick conclusions here. The band pulled off fewer mistakes at the first Prague show. The first one crept in at the 80% mark of the opening Caught Somewhere in Time (in Ljubljana, the first obvious fumble came right at the entry into the first pre-chorus passage). It was interesting to watch Harris again — clearly the one member who’s 100% locked in on the current Iron Maiden performance at all times — and how he periodically dashes from one bandmate to another. At precisely those moments in songs where the risk of someone slipping up is highest, Harris appears: now next to one guitarist, now next to the other. Encouraging, nudging. This show unfortunately confirmed that Nicko no longer replicates those thunderous drum fills from the »Somewhere In Time« originals. Shame. Then again, the man has taken a hard turn into the seventies, so perhaps that can be forgiven to some degree.
That said, an Iron Maiden show with this kind of (largely nostalgic) production and this carefully chosen setlist simply cannot miss its mark. The feeling throughout was excellent. All the way through. Thanks to the performance of classic tracks the band hadn’t played in years, their fantastic and upbeat mood, and — the cherry on top — the outstanding vocal execution of one and only Bruce Dickinson. He did allow himself one unfortunate slip before Death of the Celts. As everyone knows, Bruce loves to talk. And ramble. About all manner of things. This time, rather than musing about ancient Celtic tribal rituals as he’d done before that same song in Ljubljana, he was hyping up the football match between his team and Slavia Prague veterans — and in the middle of firing up the crowd he accidentally blurted out: »Czechoslovakia«. The reaction? Those who noticed just laughed at Dickinson’s stray shot.
Once again, Eddie made three appearances on stage in three different incarnations, and once again he and Dickinson traded fire. Bruce is something else. Remarkably well-preserved. Vocally he delivered the goods, and physically he’s holding up just as well. The energy never runs out, and the charismatic frontman remains — even on this new Maiden tour — the main engine driving the spectacle from first minute to last. With flawless routine and well-proven tricks of the trade.
The first of the band’s two Prague shows ended in triumph. For Iron Maiden and for a crowd that carried the band on their hands throughout — with fanatical encouragement, singing along, and explosions of response whenever the fantastic Bruce Dickinson called for it. All of it, summed up in one phrase: »Heavy metal Maiden magic!« — the kind you can only get from these musical giants. But there was still one more night to go….
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Edita Klemen
Setlist:
1. Caught Somewhere in Time
2. Stranger in a Strange Land
3. The Writing on the Wall
4. Days of Future Past
5. The Time Machine
6. The Prisoner
7. Death of the Celts
8. Can I Play With Madness
9. Heaven Can Wait
8. Alexander the Great
9. Fear of the Dark
10. Iron Maiden
—encore
11. Hell On Earth
12. The Trooper
13. Wasted Years
