Went to the Trieste, Italy show last night, and it was pretty good. It was somewhat special for me as I went to university at Trieste and seeing the band live at Piazza Unita' (the beautiful main city square) was just spectacular.
The band was firing on all cylinders and having fun. I arrived at the venue in the nick of time, at 9 PM exactly, so I wasn't able to get too much ahead, to my surprise (the closest I got was a few meters in front of the mixing desk). The people in the areas behind the mix desk didn't know the new songs so I thought that was a bit bland, and went ahead until I encountered a group that knew the new songs as well. I guess the reason why the crowd was so dense even this far from the stage was the fact that the fan pit was very big, at least 2-3 thousand people from what I see on the photos. There was about 15 thousand people total.
Regarding the new songs, IESF, SoL and BoS worked pretty well live, TRATB and TOAC not so much. TRATB I don't like on the album, especially the "engineered" whoah-ohs, but TOAC I do like. However, it dragged too much, in my opinion. Those irregular rhythm breaks during the chorus don't translate well when the band isn't completely in sync, especially with Nicko trying to add more notes on the snare. Death or Glory is great, but I agree with someone a few pages back that Bruce has taken it a bit too far with the monkey mask and two plush monkeys that he had with himself.
Apart from that, Powerslave was fucking huge, maybe the highlight of the show for me. HBTN always great, I missed it. Blood Brothers was great as an encore, that Janick solo still one of the best in Maiden's catalogue.
I won't bother you with pictures of the band, but I will give you this one shot of the square and stage (taken from
the local newspaper):