Words and pix by Robert Forte
Iron Maiden continue to prove that if Father Time is actually knocking on their proverbial metal doors, the band must be opening up that doorway and having Eddie beat the ever-living crap out of him time and time again. The band continued their current U.S. leg of their Future Past tour at the CFG Bank Arena in Baltimore this past week with a performance that if had to be described in a singular word, that word would be legendary.
As fans waited somewhat impatiently for their heroes in Iron Maiden to take to the stage in Baltimore, UFO’s, Doctor Doctor began to blare over the venue’s PA system. This of course being a signal to all die-hard Iron Maiden fans that the final countdown to the lads storming the stage to begin yet another one of their vaunted live performances had officially begun.
One by one Steve Harris, Nicko McBrain, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers sauntered onto the stage in Baltimore slightly before Bruce Dickinson, decked out in an outfit reminiscent of Doc Brown in the Back to the Future, joined them to take on a rousing rendition of the show’s opener, Caught Somewhere in Time.
The track was a sign of things to come in Charm City, as the band continued their ongoing tradition of featuring “eras” in the band’s timeline when they tour the globe these days. This time around, Iron Maiden chose to unearth Somewhere in Time, their 1986 opus that helped cement Iron Maiden as global superstars in the 80s with hits such as Wasted Years and Heaven Can Wait, songs that hit as hard today as the day when they were released nearly 40 years ago.
The night also featured a performance of the epic Alexander the Great, a track that up until this very tour, Iron Maiden had never even attempted to play in a live setting. The set list in Baltimore also provided longtime fans a few more classics that haven’t been played regularly live in recent years such as a spellbinding take of Can I Play with Madness, from 1988’s, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son record and an epic take on The Prisoner, from Maiden’s classic 1982 release, The Number of the Beast.
Not to be overlooked this time around should be the fact that the band’s last recorded effort, the underrated Senjutsu, is getting the live treatment that it most definitely deserves. There is no doubt that some audience members in Baltimore may have wanted to hear some of the band’s more recognizable hits such as Run to the Hills, Aces High, and or even 2 Minutes to Midnight.
However, with all due respect, Iron Maiden have played those tracks into the dirt for the last thirty-plus years and that’s not even getting into the fact that Senjutsu tracks such as The Writing on the Wall, Days of Future Past and a song that absolutely got the crowd whipped into an utter frenzy in Baltimore, the epic, Death of the Celts, more than deserve their time in the spotlight as well.
Perhaps no other hard rock or heavy metal band in history has been known to go bigger than England’s own Iron Maiden as it pertains to live show production values. Despite this fact’s existence, Iron Maiden made the decision on this tour to have a much more subtle stage setup.
Some fans on this tour may be a bit disappointed that the live show has less epic stage accoutrements, pyrotechnics and overall over-the-top bombast than most of the more recent Iron Maiden tours have featured, however those fans might be missing the point entirely. Iron Maiden seem to have gone with a much more sedate production in an effort to let the music speak for itself and so that they could also interact and engage with fans in much more intimate & ethereal ways this time around, and I have to be honest, it worked!
Yes, there were still a few moments where a larger-than-life Eddie engaged in on-stage battles with various band members, including an epic toe-to-toe with Dickinson that actually involved an enormous cannon that spit out fireballs. However, the theme throughout the performance in Baltimore always came back to the band’s focus on the music and sharing those moments in time in a much more personal way with the audience and big stage production values or not, isn’t that what any live show is supposed to be about at the end of the day anyway?
Who knows if Dickinson, Harris, Murray, Smith and or Janick Gers are taking the equivalent of metal Viagra or Cialis but for a gang of musicians now in their fifth decade of performing the quartet were a non-stop motor of metal hysteria from the very moment the band’s performance began until the final note of music was played in Baltimore. Gers, in particular, was beyond animated as he and his guitar were a whirling dervish of ferocity throughout the entirety of Maiden’s time on the lighted stage.
The guitarist also shared more than a few evil moments with Dickinson, as the pair regularly engaged while hamming it up for a crowd that continued to beg for more and more from their storied British heavy metal heroes. Harris, who has served as the backbone of Iron Maiden since the band’s inception, never disappoints as a showman either, as he too shared countless personal moments with the fans while also regularly striking his all too familiar machine gun pose with his ever-trusty Fender bass by his side.
Although a bit less animated than Gers and Harris, and let’s face what musicians would even dare keep up with that pair’s live performance pace, Murray and Smith dropped countless surreal guitar solos on the night, while also delighting the crowd every time they came together to trade off leads with one another. It’s tough to say exactly how many more years, albums or tours Iron Maiden may have left in them.
However, considering the success of their last recorded effort, the vastly underrated Senjustsu from 2021, as well as the sheer amount of ticket sales the Future Past Tour has generated to date, it’s likely safe to assume that the boys in Iron Maiden have no plans to run off into those hills they sing about and off into retirement anytime soon.
And to that I say, thank God or maybe more appropriately, thank Eddie.
