IRON MAIDEN TO BRING THE STUNNING MAIDEN ENGLAND WORLD TOUR TO EUROPE IN 2013

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No problem! :) I literally just saw a commercial for it a couple minutes ago. In the description of it, it does list them as one of the bands so I'm sure they'll show them. They better.... <_<
 
With luck it'll be the same stuff that was on Sky Arts. I like the pro footage I've seen from Download so far, I wonder if they do anything else with it?
 
It's definitely pro shot footage. They've had previous years Downloads and that was all pro too. I just saw the commercial again and saw the footage of Maiden and I got instant chills.
 
My review:

I went to the gig with my brother, Natalie, Perun, Eddie's Wingman, National Acrobat and Foro - Great meeting all of them. I traveled by car, so I left straight after the show. Anyway. There were two support bands. Voodoo Six, which Foro liked quite a bit, and Sabaton. The latter were spectacular, as always. The frontman (Brodén), his antics are quite similar to Bruce - There is some obvious stage manner influences there, and they received probably the best response I've ever seen for a support band.

Maiden were awesome, obviously, as they're Maiden. We were standing, around 25 meters from the stage. Very well orchestrated set and a good selection of songs. I did notice though, that there were a few mistakes - More than any other Maiden gig I've been to (this was my fourth). They were certainly not plentiful, just a few, but I noticed them nonetheless. Most obvious was the time when Nicko got severely off beat (mostly his kick drum) for a couple of bars. Bruce sang very well as usual, although did avoid a few of the higher Aces High notes. But all in all, a spectacular gig with some soaring high points - Seventh Son and Afraid to shoot strangers were my favorites, along with Phantom.

Janick played some excellent solos. Chaotic as usual (plenty of improvisation), but certainly not sloppy. Dave's playing was very, very fluid, which is something I've always admired about him. It never ever comes across as forced, in contrary to other guitar players. Just all very natural. There was just the one person on the internet (although an avid Maiden concert goer) that complained about Bruce not being into it, and that the band, and particularly Bruce, were on auto pilot. I disagree about that for the most part, although I did notice a slight decrease in crowd participation from Bruce compared to how I remember the last two gigs I went to in 2008 and 2010.

4/5 in my book. But as I've said, the sound was supposedly awful further back. Sounded acceptable from where I was listening though, and the drums sounded spectacular.
 
Demigod_Tyek said:
He did the same thing in Chicago and Indianapolis last summer... I thought the same thing too when I first heard it; it's as if he did it backwards... but I believe it was intentional (since he's been doing it all tour apparently).
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It seems to be like that... he did the same thing in Stockholm.
 
My review, along with a little travel diary.

I got on a plane from Oslo on Saturday around noon, and I estimate that about one third of the passengers were going because of Maiden. I got to chat with a couple of other fans. One was a Swede in his fifites, who had flown from south-western Norway earlier that day and nearly was stopped by fog. The other was a guy who turned out to be the manager of a Norwegian prog metal band called Magic Pie, of which the afore mentioned Swede was a fan! This guy told me that when Maiden played Oslo in 2011, he and some other fans had rented a limousine, had it painted with Iron Maiden logos and Eddie paintings and what not, and drove slowly past the venue where fans had started queueing up. Many obviously thought that the band was in that car, because they turned towards it and chanted "Maiden, Maiden ..." at it. But on the back window of the limo, they could see the following text: "We're not the band, just some crazy fans who like to spend money".

Oh well. I got to Stcokholm, and after dumping my luggage I met Natalie, Foro, National Acrobat and Perun in the central station. Later we were joined by Yaz and brother, who came in by car. After having something to eat, we went out to the venue - a short train trip outside the city centre. I had a seat ticket which I wanted to trade for a standing one, but I didn't succeed. So, I left the others and went inside the venue. To start: Friends Arena is huge. It's not Wembley huge, but still huge. Still, no problem getting a beer before the show, or between Voodoo Six and Sabaton. However, between Sabaton and Maiden there was no chance.

The concert review goes in spoilers:

Voodoo Six: Good band, good fun, but not enough variation in their songs to be a headlining band. Served their purpose as a first support act.

Sabaton: Great band, both in terms of songs and musicianship, and they had a very good interaction with the crowd. I had not listened much to them before, but now I certainly will. A band I could easily imagine myself paying to see if they play in Oslo later.

Maiden: Well, what to say? It was a great show, with many live classics and some nice surprises. I knew part of the set list (SSOASS and ATSS were no surprise to me) but not all of it. The Prisoner and Phantom were total surprises to me. Since I missed the Early Days tour, it was great getting to hear these two songs live now. The atmospheric section of SSOASS was extended a bit compared to the studio version, and the keyboards were louder in the mix. As it is one of my favourite songs, it was really awesome to hear it live.

Some of the stage props were also really cool, like the thing moving inside the guts that Eddie was holding up during the son Iron Maiden, the organ and face-paint on Mr. Kenney during his keyboard parts in SSOASS, and there was also more pyro than on previous Maiden shows I've been to. Bruce didn't talk much between songs this time around, but he had a lot to say about Nicko during his presentation of the band members during Running Free :D

The not-so-good was that up where I was placed, there were more people sitting than standing, except during the obvious crowd-pleasers like Run To The Hills, The Trooper and Fear of the Dark. The standing crowd seemed lively, like it always is.

Also, the sound wasn't really good. As Yax has already commented on, the guitar sound was muddy and many times it was hard separating the guitar sounds from each other. However, the drums sounded great. The vocals a bit up and down. But I guess this is what one has to expect in an indoor venue of this size.

Still, hearing four songs for the first time - Afraid To Shoot Strangers, The Prisoner, Phantom of the Opera and SSOASS - far outweights these little negatives, and I thoroughly enjoyed the concert.
 
The rest of the trip diary follows.

After the gig, I met the rest of the guys again. Yax and his brother voomed off home, whereas the rest of us headed back to the city. Beer was brought to a park nearby, where we spent some hours drinking it while discussing lots of random stuff and repeatedly singing Breaking The Law. Among the random issues discussed were Shakespeare (maybe Foro and Perun would like to elaborate on that), and the pronounciation of the word biscuit, believe it or not. When the beer was gone and the sky was turning brighter as the night was about to become morning, we headed back to our respective quarters.

After a short night's sleep I got up, took a couple of painkillers for my head, had breakfast and checked out. The hotel breakfast was not much to write home about - I've had better breakfasts in cheaper places before, so I suspect the hotel prices were inflated this weekend because of the concert. Anyway. I headed off to the city centre, and went for a walk which took me to the Vasa museum. Here, I spent a couple of hours, before I went outside and after a while met the others, who arrived by boat. We found a restaurant and sat down to have a beer and something to eat.

While dining, we witnessed an episode involving a tram and a taxi. There is a tram line passing around the corner where this restaurant is located, and a taxi had parked right outside the restaurant - very close to the tram rails. It proved to be too close, so when a tram arrived it was not able to pass. For more than half an hour, we witnessed parking guards, the tram driver and random passers-by discuss how they were to solve this. Somebody tried to locate the taxi owner, but had no success. Some people tried to push the car away, but could not defeat the parking brakes. The situation was resolved when the tram reversed back to the previous junction and took a different route to its next destination. The taxi driver was probably fined.

After we had finished our food, I said goodbye to the others and headed for the central station, and got to the airport with an hour to go before my flight home. Enough time to have another pint and watch some football on the TV - when not being distracted by the sight of a very cute waitress :D. Was home and safe at about 9 pm yesterday.
 
RE: Crowd participation and Bruce
When I saw the show on the US run, Bruce talked to the crowd quite a bit more, I think at all US shows about 3 songs in he talked about how cold it was with all the icebergs (being a shed tour in the summer, it was hotter than hell outside) and how they brought all this pyro to warm things up and that the city might end up needing a new venue after the show.

Before ATSS, he talked about them visiting the 7th Cavalry in Ft Hood (I think) and how the got the patch for the Eddie that would come out during RTTH (this probably started late in the tour, since the base is in Texas).

Whatever he said during Phantom was longer too.

In Gdansk, he did none of this ... I was assuming because he assumed a non English speaking audience, I am not sure

Re: Crowd sitting standing ... do not see a need to spoiler this, in Gdansk most of the the crowd was on it's feet the entire show, I was surprised looking up in the nose bleed seats and seeing people standing up there for large portions of the show.
 
In Europe you would normally see this. It might bee that the reason was I was in a section that was released for sale in a second batch, so that there were more casual fans there (assuming most of the die-hard fans bought their tickets on the day of release)
 
It was good to see and you rarely (any more) see that in the US ... in the 80s, you might. I've been to s few shows (not Maiden) where there is a pit area in the front, then on the floor seats are slightly elevated and start maybe 150 feet from the stage and those people are sitting most of the show.

I do not get why people buy expensive tickets to a rock concert and refuse to have fun.
 
bearfan said:
It was good to see and you rarely (any more) see that in the US ... in the 80s, you might. I've been to s few shows (not Maiden) where there is a pit area in the front, then on the floor seats are slightly elevated and start maybe 150 feet from the stage and those people are sitting most of the show.

I do not get why people buy expensive tickets to a rock concert and refuse to have fun.
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Went to the gig in Stockholm. Since I live in the other side of the country, there was traveling and hotel expenses as always. Did the same for the British Lion tour earlier this year. Quite expensive, but worth it in the end. My third Maiden-gig.

Personally, I would sooner question the retarded people who came in at the front and started pushing even though it wasn't even crowded, there was space (which I liked). Have nothing against people jumping around (even though my back isn't up to it after standing up for so long), but the pushing just for the sake of it is fucking retarded.

Found that the sound was good at the front, nothing to complain about, though I understand it was horrible in other parts of the place. I heard the vocals well throughout, it was only the guitars that got a bit lost and blurred on the rhythm work, but I have experience so much worse this ended up as relatively good. Solos came through nicely. Wouldn't have mentioned anything about it if others hadn't pointed it out.

Always go to concerts to listen and watch, a bit for the atmosphere of being there but don't care for jumping around.
 
Here are a few short snippets from the concert, one is from before the concert begins to get an overview of the size of the venue and to introduce all of us wonderful Maidenfans (Nush, Perun, Yax, Forostar); the second is the intro to Maiden and the very beginning of Moonchild; the third is part of the instrumental in SOASS that I thought sounded so awesome I had to record a bit of it.




So what did I think of the concert?
In general, awesome. The venue was huge and the crowd were great (the Stockholm crowd usually are). Voodoo Six were a decent opening band, a bit monotonous, but ok. Sabaton were of course brilliant and got the backing of the crowd. Their setlist wasn't great but Perun didn't care cos they played Attero Dominatus. :D
And then Maiden were Maiden. I dunno what people have been complaining about but I thought they were great, the gig was definitely better than Boston cos the crowd were more into it and the performance and sound were better. Especially the vocals and the drums (!) sounded fantastic, but we were also quite close to the stage. Bruce seemed really to feed off the crowd, he got more and more into it as the show wore on. He didn't talk all that much but when he did he had really nice things to say and was quite original (during some pyro bit he pointed to the flames and listed some Swedish inventions...perhaps dynamite, and AGA cooker?). And his performance on some songs were absolutely stellar. I read it as 'the more theatrical Bruce gets, the more he's loving it'. So the performance he put in for Seventh Son I think was indicative of how much he was loving it. Highlights were Phantom, Seventh Son, Afraid to Shoot Strangers, The Evil that Men Do, Fear of the Dark (Bruce seemed to be enjoying it for once) and Aces High. Oh and Running Free, mostly because he bullied Nicko into giving us a drum solo. It was an awful half-assed drum solo, but we didn't care.

After the concert we got a substantial amount of people to dance with us to the Monty Python outro, which was pretty effing special. And then we headed out to collect beer (and Wingman who was in the stands) and went off to drink in a park. We stayed up until 5 am and Perun especially couldn't get over the fact that it never got truly dark. Oh and we changed the lyrics of Fear of the Dark to Beer in the Park. :cheers:

Looking forward to next years Maidenfans meet-up round 3. Hopefully with a healthy mix of new and old members. :)

'Tis all in the spoiler. ;)
 
We never discussed the sound yesterday, but you say it was great down at the floor? Argh. Another reason to regret not getting a ticket down there. If I show up to another meet-up with a seating ticket, feel free to hit my head with something and call me silly names.
 
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