Iron Maiden
Malahide Castle, Dublin
*****
Iron Maiden’s Run for Your Lives tour begins with a dingy east London backstreet vista projected on to the big screen with boarded up pubs and a sign to Upton Park – erstwhile home of West Ham United.
Iron Maiden are 50 years old this year. Not only were many of their fans not born then, many of their parents weren’t born either.
The band came from nothing in east London and they are still here, doing what they do, undimmed by the passing years.
Iron Maiden could do a Metallica and create two separate set lists on separate nights and sell them as two nights.
These two are the only bands in heavy metal with a back catalogue that good. Instead, Iron Maiden stuck to a greatest hits package – and by greatest hits we mean the greatest of greatest hits, the first XI, the gold standard, the best of the best.
The set list was entirely composed of songs from the band’s incredible streak which began with the debut album, Iron Maiden, in 1980 and ended in 1992 with Fear of the Dark after which singer Bruce Dickinson left the band for six years.
Iron Maiden's new drummer Simon Dawson, who began playing live with the band only last month. Photograph: Dan Dennison
Iron Maiden's new drummer Simon Dawson, who began playing live with the band only last month. Photograph: Dan Dennison
Iron Maiden's Janick Gers on stage at Malahide Castle, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison
Iron Maiden's Janick Gers on stage at Malahide Castle, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison
Steve Harris of Iron Maiden performs at Malahide Castle, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison
Steve Harris of Iron Maiden performs at Malahide Castle, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison
If you polled Iron Maiden fans, you couldn’t have produced a better set list give or take the odd quibble here or there. It’s all killer(s) and no filler, pun fully intended, as the first three songs, Murders in the Rue Morgue, Wrathchild and Killers are all from the 1980 album Killers.
Dickinson needs to donate his vocal cords to science. How he keeps hitting the higher register song after song, tour after tour, is a wonder. He is 66, yet he is no different in style or substance than he was when he was half the age, bounding around the stage.
He remains as ever the greatest showman, at once wearing a luchador mask during the ancient Egyptian-themed Rime of the Ancient Mariner and singing the incomparable Hallowed Be Thy Name while locked in a cage.
Whoever did these visuals deserves the musical equivalent of an Oscar or whatever baubles they give out for set design
During The Trooper, a song about the Crimean war, Dickinson swaps the Union Jack that he waves around like a man leading the charge of the Light Brigade, for an Irish tricolour.
Maybe he’s trying to be ... what’s that word that gets commonly used for this type of gesture? Inclusive? Or perhaps he knows that the first Victoria Cross medals in history were won during the Crimean War and they were both won by Irishmen? Anyway, we digress.
Dickinson welcomed the new drummer, Simon Dawson, who began playing live with the band only last month. He replaced the affable long-term drummer Nicko McBrain, who retired at the age of 73 last year.
Fans of Iron Maiden enjoy the show at Malahide Castle, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison
Fans of Iron Maiden enjoy the show at Malahide Castle, Dublin. Photograph: Dan Dennison
The real star of the tour is the immersive digital display which accompanies every song. It is, in effect, a seventh member and a suitable backdrop for the band’s epic takes on history, myth and literature.
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On Rime of the Ancient Mariner, a 13-and-a-half minute epic equal to the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem on which it is based, a full-rigged ship pitches through mountainous seas, freezing waters and sunsets coloured red and blue. It is hard to take your eyes off the big screen as it conveys the majesty and horror of being at sea in a doomed ship.
Whoever did these visuals deserves the musical equivalent of an Oscar or whatever baubles they give out for set design. If it is done by AI, we are entering a new realm of concert visuals.
This band can’t go on forever, but here they are, still rocking against the dying of the light. No AI will ever change that.