RUN FOR YOUR LIVES 2025 Tour Thread *SPOILERS INSIDE*

I guess they probably reused the (2nd) walk-on Trooper Eddie because they don't use other inflatables or props (aside from the torches). Just 2 walk-ons.
 
tsier said:
Does anyone know if Budapest shirt will be available for sale later this year? Or is it available for club members right now?
I missed it and link I had for the shirt says:

"This item is not available in (my country) or is only available to members."
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In the past they did the same thing, shirts abvailable for 48 hrs, and after that time frame the shirt disappeared. And was never brought back.
The absolute only exception they did yet was the Herve shirt from last year, TFP, with the brain eating Eddie, still available. Reason is obvious I guess... it's so ugly that absolutely no one wants to have it.

It's good they obviously sacked herve for their tour shirt designs. I never got it. They could afford the most brilliant artists on the planet for their iconic mascot, while those Herve designs looked like done by 4th grader or even worse. My Eddie drawings as a ten year old back in 1985 in my school books looked better.
 
On a side note, the (almost) no-phone policy has the negative effect that Leana is not streaming live anylonger on Instagram. She provided good videos for FPT and TMP.
 
Iron Lurker said:
I have to resign myself to this. I have a few friends who are artists trying to make a living and I'm concerned for them.
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I don’t think we have gamed this out enough to understand the ramifications of AI. There will be good from it, sure there is of all technologies but I fear for the future. It will be worse than the internet. If we could I’d imagine many people would prefer life pre-internet and digitization of media. (Me being one of them) the internet has contributed far more negatives than positives, AI only being the newest of the negatives. The positives amount to basically conveniences (a major simplification for posting purposes) but the negatives have caused incredible mental health problems we are only starting to notice.

The video for Rime is terrible, obviously AI and I’m disappointed to see maiden use it. Like most AI it adds nothing to the experience and is just filler, visual slop. Bummer.
 
I didn't watch a whole show so that I will still have surprises left, but my impressions are very positive.

Bruce sounds very good, why did he have to choose “Aces High” as the last song. Now many people are just talking about how he can't sing it anymore and how terrible it sounds, really dumb of him.
Steve and Adrian are in very good shape, Dave is well prepared, but Janick doesn't seem as fit as usual?

I'm impressed with how well Simon is coping with the many challenges of his new role. I've also seen a lot of praise for him in groups.
I wonder if those who put him down would be happier if there was a bit of decoration around him, like this?

Drummer.png

Or a long haired wig? Because I've also seen weird comments saying he doesn't look metal enough?
 
Azas said:
Regardless of my opinion, AI is here to stay. The genie is already out of the lamp, and it’s not going back in. From now on, AI will only grow in presence—and I’m pretty sure we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. I’m not defending it (yeah, I mess around with this new shiny toy, but I don’t make any money off it, so I think my view is fairly level-headed). I’m pretty confident it’s going to harm a lot of lives, but it’s inevitable—unless it ends up being heavily regulated and proper laws are put in place. Right now, we’re in the wild west phase.

And honestly, I find some of the outrage a bit ironic. Remember Lars and the Napster situation? Lars was actually a victim, yet a lot of music listeners crucified him for it. Now it’s the same story, just reversed—bands will increasingly (no doubt about it) use this new cost-effective tech, just like fans used cost-effective Napster. So yeah, in that way, this anger toward AI feels a bit cringe.

That doesn’t mean I fully support AI—especially when “bow and arrow screw-ups” end up in final visuals. All I’m saying is: a new wave of technology has arrived, and until something is done to regulate it, this is what we’re dealing with. I’m pretty sure it won’t be long before actors start losing jobs to AI. Welcome to Brave New World. They’re gonna screw us all.
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Eh, I disagree with the premise of "AI is here to stay, so the unethical use of copyrighted material". That attitude is "cringe" to me.
The Napster situation is apples to oranges and has nothing to do with the current topic. And creating literal hundreds of posts using gen AI, as well as several of the most recent text posts using LLMs like ChatGPT and calling that "fairly level-headed" is certainly hilarious. Though hypocrisy might be a more apt description ;)

The bottom line is simple: If a band, a group of artists, can't respect the art of creation enough to throw a couple of hundred dollar bills to a cover illustrator and would rather use generative AI, then why should fans respect these bands? Why should we support them and give them our money? Not gonna advocate for piracy on a public forum, but bands that openly embrace generative AI in their content won't see another cent of my money.

It's purely about the principle. Musicians should know how difficult it has become to make a living as an artist. They should show solidarity and support to fellow artists, not stab them in the back. It's pretty hilarious that we've reached a point where AI can churn out fairly decent if generic music. When that happens, suddenly the bands that were all too happy to use gen AI for cover artworks were up in arms about their jobs being threatened. It doesn't take a genius to see that this would impact musicians as well, sooner rather than later.

Also, the technology is in its infancy. There will be regulations in the future and there have already been the first legal challenges. Just wait until someone like Disney starts cracking down on some poor fool who tries to use AI to make shitty knockoffs and profit from them. Just because it is promising technology doesn't mean that we shouldn't raise criticisms. I have principles that I stand by and I hope others do the same.
 
In their press material, Wizard Live (Maiden's event management agency in Germany) tries to make sense of the fact that the band's 50th anniversary is not being celebrated with songs from the band's entire history:
“With a setlist from the formative early decades...”
(my translation)
 
You're just impossible. Your default mode is judging from an ivory tower—mine is looking at what's actually happening out there. Twenty-five years later, music is still being shared for free in massive amounts, no matter what you or I think about it. That’s reality. And a similar reality is unfolding with AI—whether you like it or not.

If you could actually read, you'd see that I did mention the need for laws and regulation. But as long as those are ignored, we’ll keep living in the Wild West—because that’s just human nature. And if you're trying to throw shade at me for using AI to generate images, then sincerely: go f*** yourself. I didn’t make a single cent from it, it's currently legal, and even if most of those images were mediocre, it was still something contributed to the MaidenFans forum. Maybe a few of them sparked someone’s imagination for a second, or at least showed how flawed this tech still is.

And don’t think it was effortless. Even though it’s AI, it still took a lot of time—I edited many of those images multiple times. This “new toy” is far from perfect.

But hey, it’s always easy to play the moralist, isn’t it? Perched up there in your ivory tower, pretending the world runs on some vacuum-sealed set of lab conditions where everything’s pure and flawless. Meanwhile, the last three or four MaidenVerse short stories? All written by me. And the AI you so clearly hate helped me present those stories on the forum in proper f*ing English**. How cool is that? It might’ve even helped me push through some writer’s block.

And again—you chose to ignore me. So why are you crawling back now? That’s not how this works. You made your choice—to dwell in your tower. But now it’s eating at you, and here you are, coming back like some moral patrolman trying to score points in another virtual skirmish.

Also—Lars vs. Napster? Not apples and oranges. It fits this perfectly.

So go back to the shadows—and stay there! Ha ha.

This rant was translated into proper English by AI—while fully preserving my style and tone.
 
Azas said:
You're just impossible. Your default mode is judging from an ivory tower—mine is looking at what's actually happening out there. Twenty-five years later, music is still being shared for free in massive amounts, no matter what you or I think about it. That’s reality. And a similar reality is unfolding with AI—whether you like it or not.
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This has nothing to do with "ivory towers". I'm "judging" this from the perspective of my passion for music as a hobby musician, as well as my professional opinion as someone with a compsci degree who has literally worked with artificial intelligence and machine learning. Piracy and AI are not remotely similar and only someone who hasn't thought out any of their arguments would try to make that point. Piracy is not a type of technology. AI can be used in an ethical way, but it isn't. Again, entirely unrelated.

Azas said:
If you could actually read, you'd see that I did mention the need for laws and regulation. But as long as those are ignored, we’ll keep living in the Wild West—because that’s just human nature. And if you're trying to throw shade at me for using AI to generate images, then sincerely: go f*** yourself. I didn’t make a single cent from it, it's currently legal, and even if most of those images were mediocre, it was still something contributed to the MaidenFans forum. Maybe a few of them sparked someone’s imagination for a second, or at least showed how flawed this tech still is.
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I'm only "throwing shade" at the claim of being "fairly level headed" when you are incredibly invested in these technologies and have probably spent hundreds of hours in the past couple of years engaging with it.

Azas said:
And don’t think it was effortless. Even though it’s AI, it still took a lot of time—I edited many of those images multiple times. This “new toy” is far from perfect.
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Of course it is far from perfect. But all of this is irrelevant because we are talking about the ethics of training on stolen and copyrighted material.

Azas said:
But hey, it’s always easy to play the moralist, isn’t it? Perched up there in your ivory tower, pretending the world runs on some vacuum-sealed set of lab conditions where everything’s pure and flawless. Meanwhile, the last three or four MaidenVerse short stories? All written by me. And the AI you so clearly hate helped me present those stories on the forum in proper f*ing English**. How cool is that? It might’ve even helped me push through some writer’s block.
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Come back once you can engage in a discission like a proper human being instrad of vague accusations of moralists and ivory towers. I don't mind your use of AI like that and younare free to do what you want. But if you feel the need to defend AI by calling criticisms cringe, you should expect push back against some of your dumber arguments.


Azas said:
And again—you chose to ignore me. So why are you crawling back now? That’s not how this works. You made your choice—to dwell in your tower. But now it’s eating at you, and here you are, coming back like some moral patrolman trying to score points in another virtual skirmish.
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Quit the persecution fetish, buddy.

Azas said:
Also—Lars vs. Napster? Not apples and oranges. It fits this perfectly.
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Nope!
 
FTB said:
First real test for the production tonight. Massive Field and a lot of daylight left
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Yeah. Interesting to see how it'll work, as I'm potentially going to show in Helsinki on 16th of June; the show is scheduled to end just before the sunset (22:50), wohoo... :D

Well I hope at least the sound will be good! The Olympic Stadium in Helsinki isn't the ideal venue, but I've enjoyed those two times I've seen Maiden there, so I suppose it'll be good anyway!
 
Vaenyr said:
It's purely about the principle. Musicians should know how difficult it has become to make a living as an artist. They should show solidarity and support to fellow artists, not stab them in the back. It's pretty hilarious that we've reached a point where AI can churn out fairly decent if generic music. When that happens, suddenly the bands that were all too happy to use gen AI for cover artworks were up in arms about their jobs being threatened. It doesn't take a genius to see that this would impact musicians as well, sooner rather than later.
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Exactly. It's why I made sure to put a stab in re: Adrian's stance on AI in music in my post about this - it's beyond fucking hypocritical now for him to be critical of AI in music, when he's perfectly happy to play in a band that would rather use generative AI for its background footage than pay real artists for their work.
 
The setlist is good there are no "deep cuts" but a lot of rare songs or not usual. Murders,killers,phantom,rime seventh son .
The stage i like it for some songs like rime but during iron maiden i was expecting a big classic eddie and not that eddie. For me that was a low point
 
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