“Welcome to this amazing evening,” grins Bruce Dickinson, gladhanding the 75,000 people in front of him at the home of West Ham. “It’s a homecoming for Steve, and a homecoming for us after 50 bloody years.”
One week from tonight, Black Sabbath will take one final bow, a stone’s throw from the Birmingham streets that birthed them, at Aston Villa’s ground. Tonight, with an equally bassist-pleasing location, Iron Maiden have come back to their spiritual home, not Donington Park, but the East End of London.
That it’s taken the band half a century to do the most Maiden thing and book themselves into Steve Harris’ holy stadium only makes tonight even more of a celebration. And though this tour is one that looks back, concentrating on roughly the first quarter of their lifespan, from 1980’s self-titled debut through 1992’s Fear Of The Dark, rarely have they been as charged, vital and energised as they are tonight.
At six o’clock, as those still making the transition from pub to venue are in the process of being turned into human jerky by the sun, The Raven Age have a weather update. “Tell you what, it’s a bit fuckin’ hot in here,” grins singer Matt James, apparently not noticing the mass of melted skin gathered in front of him, or the fact that he’s wearing a jacket. With the sun still up, he does the get-your-phone-lights-up thing, admitting that it’s probably a lost cause in blinding daylight. What does work in a big place like this in the early evening, though, are melodic metal bangers like Forgive & Forget and The Day The World Stood Still, sounding far beefier than they do on record, leaving The Raven Age looking very comfortable and confident in such a beast of a setting.