LIVE: IRON MAIDEN – Perth, 1 September, 2024

LIVE: IRON MAIDEN – Perth, 1 September, 2024
With Killswitch Engage – RAC Arena, Perth, Western Australia
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
Photography by Stu McKay

Iron Maiden – and especially multi-talented frontman Brice Dickinson – have never been willing to lean back and rely on past glories, instead constantly creating new material as they’ve forged ahead into their latterday prog rock persona. As part of this, they have long resisted playing many of the classic hits which made them world famous, and this has been a bone of contention for many fans.

Personally, I admire them for wanting to celebrate recent additions to their catalogue – but I’d still like to see them play Number Of The Beast, Run To The Hills, Aces High, Wrathchild, Phantom Of The Opera and many more iconic tracks. No such luck tonight – which was not a surprise to those of us who researched the first leg of their Future Past World Tour, but was enough to slightly sour the experience for some of the “I like your old stuff better than your new stuff” crowd.

First though, while half the crowd defy the cost-of-living crisis to stock up on $70 t-shirts and posters (who else has – in mascot Eddie – such a striking visual representation so ripe for marketing?) Killswitch Engage deliver a passionate set to the other half, culminating in their excellent cover of Dio’s Holy Diver.

As show time for the main act approaches, the near-packed RAC Arena is buzzing. Thirteen thousand fans of all ages – it’s Father’s Day in Australia, and there are a LOT of Dads proudly sharing the experience with their kids, as this scribe did on Maiden’s 2016 tour in the same venue – are gagging for it… and when it happens, the roar is deafening.

First, a bell sounds and UFO’s classic Doctor, Doctor plays on the PA, then the lights dim and Vangelis’s closing synth piece from Blade Runner plays, tying us in to the tour theme: Future Past. Tonight we’re to hear a chunk of latest album, 2021’s Senjutso, and some choice tracks from, mostly, the Somewhere In Time era.

Indeed, Caught Somewhere In Time is first up, and another four of the eight tracks from it’s parent album will get an airing tonight – Stranger In A Strange Land, Heaven Can Wait, Alexander The Great and Wasted Years. Likewise, there’s five from Senjutso: Writing On The Wall, Days of Future Past, Time Machine, Death Of The Celts and Hell On Earth.

Only the band’s titular epic Iron Maiden pays any homage to their formative years, and it’s the final song of the main set, a primal, punky blast of aggression and energy which is raw, feral and perfect. Classic breakthrough album Number Of The Beast – their third, Dickinson’s first with the band – is represented only by The Prisoner, featuring Patrick McGoohan’s voice over intro from the 1960’s TV series of the same name. The biggest roars were reserved for these classic tracks, plus a few other pivotal hits to make up the numbers and please long-term fans – Can I Play With Madness, Fear Of The Dark and the ever-amazing The Trooper.

Keeping themselves happy and invested by playing their new material, and pleasing fans new and old heavily invested in past hits, is a tightrope act which few fully achieve – and keeping everybody happy with a setlist spanning seventeen studio albums over forty-four years is simply impossible. Maiden did a great job of balancing that ledger tonight, though pretty much no fan in the world would attest they would rather hear the plodding Alexander The Great over any of the absent classics mentioned earlier.

What made tonight’s show rise above any minor setlist quibbles was the energetic, good humoured performance. The band haven’t played live since the October 2023 Power Trip Festival in California, and they are rested and firing on all cylinders are a couple of weeks rehearsing in Perth. That’s not all they did, with Dickinson more than once professing an adoration for our quokkas of Rottnest Island.

He’s in great spirits – grinning widely (even when he trips over Janick Gers’ guitar cord whilst fooling around), joking with the crowd (Can I Row With Agnes, anyone?), and declaring sincere admiration for the response the band receive. “We played to half this many last time and we’re almost dead now – and you’re multiplying!”

It wasn’t all jolly japes, though: Dickinson got more serious introducing Death Of The Celts by referencing more modern attempted genocides – and we can infer the atrocities which are happening in Palestine, and which happened to our own indigenous peoples can be included in this – saying that while there is language, there is culture and there is people, a genocide cannot be successful.

He’s absolutely a picture of health and vitality, traversing the stage like a considerably younger man than the sixty-six-year-old recent cancer survivor which he is. And that voice is still incredible after four and a half decades singing, and a significant tussle with tongue cancer in 2015.

The rest of the band trade guitar solos frenetically and vigorously, getting their steps up as they constantly throw shapes and run laps around the stage. Given their vintage (Dickinson is the band’s youngest member) and fitness, you’d be forgiven for thinking that they’d been caught somewhere younger in time themselves as they look and behave exactly nothing like the group of old buggers of retirement age they are.

Visuals are important at an Iron Maiden show – and not just on the endless sea of black tees adorned with Eddie’s snarling head. A succession of colourful backdrops and animations adorn the rear screens throughout the show, Eddie appearing in various incarnations depending on the vintage of each song. Flames roar from time to time reminding us we should have brought marshmallows to toast on the fire even from halfway back, and Eddie also appears in the ‘flesh’ honouring the tour’s theme: as the space-age gunslinger of Somewhere In Time fame, and as the samurai warrior of Senjutso. These eight-foot-plus monsters prowl the stage, the former engaging in a shootout with Dickinson, the latter attacking guitarist Janick Gers with his katana sword.

For the encore the backdrop features Eddie as a ruined Statue Of Liberty, a la Planet Of The Apes, which could have made a great album cover – as could exploring the parallels between Maiden’s arena rock spectacle with the ‘bread and circuses’ gladiator death matches, a milieu screaming out for a visit from Eddie.

By the time the last chorus of triumphant heavy pop hit Wasted Years rings out nearly two hours after they started, thirteen thousand throats are hoarse and any quibbles about someone’s favourite song not getting an airing are purely academic.

Iron Maiden have always been at the apex of what a rock band can be – not to mention a heavy metal band (whatever that antiquated label means nowadays). This first show of the second leg of the band’s Future Past tour shows they are indisputably in the top three heavy rock live acts currently touring – and on any given night, such as this great performance – arguably the best.

Set List:

Caught Somewhere In Time
Stranger In A Strange Land
The Writing On The Wall
Days of Future Past
Time Machine
The Prisoner
Death Of The Celts
Can I Play With Madness
Heaven Can Wait
Alexander The Great
Fear Of The Dark
Iron Maiden

Hell On Earth
The Trooper
Wasted Years

 

Category: Live Reviews, Photo Galleries