It is barely five minutes since “Wasted Years” has finished and I’m walking through the square that surrounds The Nottingham Arena that the world’s finest heavy metal band have essentially just laid waste to, and lots of people in lots of very expensive new Iron Maiden t-shirts are chatting excitedly.
Amongst it all though, there’s one voice. One lone voice saying to the chap she’s with: “A big show like that and they haven’t done ‘Run To The Hills’? I don’t get it.”
Welcome to the Future Past Tour, everyone.
Iron Maiden have been playing this European Tour – their first run in the UK for almost five years – for six weeks and on the first night I was looking at the setlist going “Blimey, that’s brave, fair play to them”. And they’ve played the same one every show since.
The Greatest Hits this ain’t. What It is, is Iron Maiden, proving that if they are not a legacy act, knocking out an hour and a half of hits for the grateful, then no one guards their legacy better.
At 8.50 pm precisely (everything about this is precise, they run like clockwork) “Doctor, Doctor” blares out. Grown men get as excited as four-year-olds on Christmas Eve, and scream along with Phil Mogg. Then the “Blade Runner” theme, and finally a recorded intro for “Caught Somewhere In Time”. Somewhere, somehow, it changes to live and four men run out. These men, reckons a fifth who hasn’t appeared yet, have a combined age of 300, and of course, you worry as a fan. As someone who has loved the band since childhood. You don’t want to see your heroes weakened. Don’t. Mess. Up. That’s your thoughts, be honest.
For the next almost two hours, Iron Maiden are the greatest exponents of arena rock. What were you fretting about?
Bruce Dickinson, is 65 years old, yet he leaps he runs, he sings brilliantly. He’s leading you into a chorus before you know it. He does it again on “Stranger In A Strange Land”. He’s wonderful.
But this show – the first Maiden one to use a video wall – is slick, it’s polished, it’s been planned, and it’s the best metal show you’ll see anywhere this year.
The “Senjutsu” album has been out getting on for two years but its “new” in terms of this tour and its best moment “The Writing On The Wall” belongs in this company.
The band are justifiably proud of it too, and enough of it is given a spotlight. “Days Of Future Past” and “The Time Machine” make a hat-trick and the epic “Death Of The Celts” follows not long after, but the name of the tour? That past bit? There’s some here they haven’t played for ages. “The Prisoner” is glorious and “Can I Play With Madness” is one of the great 80s songs.
It’s “Heaven Can Wait” and “Alexander The Great” though, that elevate this to the next level. The former, is knockabout fun with explosions, guns, and a battle with Eddie The Head, the latter an incredible, sweeping thing, and proof, should it be needed, that the band are still able to play as well as ever.
Then it does what it was always going to. “Fear Of The Dark” and “Iron Maiden” itself. As huge in scale as they’ve ever been, and if no one believes that it’s really “goodnight from Eddie and the boys” then you really weren’t prepared for the encore.
“Hell On Earth” (the final “Senjutsu” tune) has more pyro in five minutes than most bands in a career, “The Trooper” is a gallop to end them all and “Wasted Years”.
One of those songs that whenever you hear it, you recognise as genius, and the Adrian Smith composition sounds arguably even better here.
Before they play it, Bruce Dickinson screams that “every night we play this is the best of our lives” and watching them do it as they head into their own “golden years” as it were, you realise, that there has never, nor will there ever be, a better heavy metal band than this.
They’ve got their own army. They are supported like a football team with the crowd in replica kit almost, and if they didn’t play “Run To The Hills” they did play the arena show of the year.
