Best and worst opening bands you have seen.

Austrogoth said:
The official website mentions "Montluron" instead of Montluçon... They can't even spell citynames properly... which happen quite frequently it seems (Wiener, instead of Wiener Neustadt for instance)
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Yeah, 2 errors in the Belgian venues too: Briepoort instead of Brielpoort and Brabenthal instead of Brabanthal.
 
Tough question since I can assume you’re talking about opening bands that you are not super familiar with? I’ve seen amazing opening bands, but I’m a massive fan of those bands already (Dio, Symphony X, Sabaton, Dream Theater, Clutch, etc).

As for bands that I never heard of or never listened to before attending a gig,

Best: Battle Beast. Absolutely fun as hell and catchy tunes. Easily made me a moderate fan and did their job as an opener, to pump up the crowd.

Worst: The Raven Age. Also probably Graveyard, who I’ve seen open twice and who I actually like but they are total lumps on stage.
 
srfc said:
Just noticed that the tour dates on the Maiden site are fucked up, they don't have the belfast date listed, and they have the Dublin date as taking place on the day the Belfast date took place. By all accounts that Belfast date was possibly the worst attended in Europe since the pub days, so I wonder are Maiden trying to delete it from history :lol:
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I've found this. So you must not be dreaming, whatever Rod says! ;)
https://maidenfrance.fr/iron-maiden-show-belfast-north-ireland-960130/
 
See, the thing about opening bands is lots of them are fine within their idiom, but that idiom isn't for me. IE, I'm not going to go off on how much I disliked Aephanemer because they're good in their area but it's not my area. Same, I'm not going to go after local Ottawa bands that aren't very good either, because that's not very fair to them.

Best opener I saw: I'd have to go with Ghost. Awesome opening act for Maiden.
Most surprising: Striker. Great little Canadian band that really impressed me. I saw them again on a headline gig and I'd go see them over and over. Great act.
Most disappointing: I'll put two here. One was Sanctuary, but of course Warrel Dane died between the announcement of the tour where they opened for IE and the actual show. It was their first show without him so it was naturally uneven. As that might be considered a little unfair (understandably so) I'd say Sonata Arctica opening for Kamelot. They had no energy and their new songs are not good. I had liked seeing them on a headline act in 2014.
Worst opener: Lamb of God. I went back and forth between them and Raven Age but in the end I give it to Lamb of God because I like one Raven Age song.
 
That's far too much discussion for this thread LC. I was under the impression this thread was meant to be a "list it and leave it" sort of thread.
 
Alice Cooper was awesome opening for Maiden in Oslo 2011.

Worst is probably Killswitch Engage two years ago. I really didn't like them.

Ghost also bored the hell out of me. The singer talked for about 10 minutes about the female orgasm and his stage presence almost put me into a coma. Luckily Bruce who surely is twice his age has a bit more energy on stage.
 
Poto said:
Alice Cooper was awesome opening for Maiden in Oslo 2011.
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I very nearly put Cooper in my list as well. Seeing him and Maiden in 2012 was knocking two bands clear off. I decided not to include him as Cooper was well established at the time already.

Poto said:
Ghost also bored the hell out of me. The singer talked for about 10 minutes about the female orgasm and his stage presence almost put me into a coma. Luckily Bruce who surely is twice his age has a bit more energy on stage.
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When I've seen Ghost as a standalone act (twice now) I really found them to go a little long. I thought the 10 song list played before the Maiden gigs were really good though. This is the same show where Bruce talked about "the evil spectre of mother-father sex" so let's cut the guy a little bit of slack.
 
Poto said:
Haha. At least Bruce's speech was a bit shorter.
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True enough. Anyway, I like Ghost (or I like what Ghost was circa 2017) and I thought they had a lot of energy. Their fans bothered me though, because they were all whining "why is Ghost opening."

Uh, because Ghost sells out arenas and Maiden sells out stadiums, you dumb twit.
 
Best: Iced Earth with Barlow opening for fucking Saxon. Can you believe it?
Worst: Avenged Sevenfold for Iron Maiden. I was one of over 20000 people booing them in Paris in 2008. Felt cathartic.
 
srfc said:
I got them on the X Factour.

The Untouchables featuring you-know-who were the support at the gig in Nottingham two days later. D'oh!

Just noticed that the tour dates on the Maiden site are fucked up, they don't have the belfast date listed, and they have the Dublin date as taking place on the day the Belfast date took place. By all accounts that Belfast date was possibly the worst attended in Europe since the pub days, so I wonder are Maiden trying to delete it from history :lol: @Luisma do you have any info about this Belfast date from Jan 30th 1996? Dublin date was definitely the 31st, I was there and I have the ticket.
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As a matter of fact, I do know about that concert Maiden played at Belfast and it just shows not only that Maiden don't keep a precise record of their concert but also the huge mess The X Factour tour was. Maiden kept changing dates, canceling concerts, moving concerts, rescheduling, and all sorts of things, making it very difficult to keep track of what concerts did or did not happen in 1995-1996.

Now, I'm not entirely sure if the Belfast concert was had the smallest attendance of all the European leg of the tour but I do know that the numbers were quite low and the band wasn't amused at all at that concert.
 
Best: Megadeth. It was so good in fact that I left after their performance, giving Five Finger Death Punch a miss altogether. After paying 90 euros for the ticket. :bigsmile: (There were also other reasons for leaving, if I'm completely honest.)

Worst: Darkness, opening for Guns N'Roses. I've never liked their music, and the front man gave an impression on being a real idiot on stage. "It's our job to get you in the mood, come on and start jumping now!" "Who the fuck threw that fucking T-shirt?!!" On his defence I must say though that it probably wasn't an easy place to be, as people were eagerly awaiting for GN'R. And maybe it was his sense of humour, which I just didn't get.
 
Luisma said:
As a matter of fact, I do know about that concert Maiden played at Belfast and it just shows not only that Maiden don't keep a precise record of their concert but also the huge mess The X Factour tour was. Maiden kept changing dates, canceling concerts, moving concerts, rescheduling, and all sorts of things, making it very difficult to keep track of what concerts did or did not happen in 1995-1996.

Now, I'm not entirely sure if the Belfast concert was had the smallest attendance of all the European leg of the tour but I do know that the numbers were quite low and the band wasn't amused at all at that concert.
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The Dublin crowd wasn't that much better, the venue held approx 2,000 and it was hard to judge for me as I was down the front for most of the gig, but it definitely seemed a smaller crowd than Slayer got about 14 months before that in the same venue, it definitely was not sold out or anything like it. It's no surprise that that was the last tour that Maiden played both Dublin and Belfast on the same tour.
 
Perun said:
Best: Iced Earth with Barlow opening for fucking Saxon. Can you believe it?
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Great show. Best bill I've seen. I didn't expect Saxon to be even better than IE was that night. But they were absolutely on fire. Caught me off guard. I'd like to add that it was a co-headline bill. Iced Earth wasn't supporting. They alternated the time slots.
 
srfc said:
The Dublin crowd wasn't that much better, the venue held approx 2,000 and it was hard to judge for me as I was down the front for most of the gig, but it definitely seemed a smaller crowd than Slayer got about 14 months before that in the same venue, it definitely was not sold out or anything like it. It's no surprise that that was the last tour that Maiden played both Dublin and Belfast on the same tour.
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I think that very few concerts during the X factour sold out. Even when Maiden played small venues and arenas, they weren't able to sell tickets. Great to read your experiences by the way
 
Bests would be bands that later became big (Metallica opening for Ozzy/Slayer opening for Judas Priest come to mind. LA Guns ... LA Guns obviously did not really take off, but they put on a good show, Alice in Chains opening for the Anthrax/Megadeth/Slayer triple bill). Probably forgetting a bunch.

Worst was Autograph opening for Van Halen on the 1984 tour ... my God did they suck
 
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