Legacy of the Beast Tour 2018 - CONTAINS SPOILERS

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Wogmidget said:
Though you do get those rare cases where the two bands playing are at essentially equal levels of popularity. For instance, I recently saw Sabaton and Amon Amarth in Sydney, and (set length excluded) it was for all intents and purposes a double-headline gig. Great stuff
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You do. Sabaton and Alestorm were classed as a double-headline gig when I saw them, although I think it's fair to say Sabaton were really the bigger act.

The commonest mismatch I see with metal gigs is pairing modern Kerrang-type metal with a more old school metal band, or pairing thrash with something like melodeath or symphonic metal. In the case of the thrash support acts, people turned up just for those bands and left before the main act came on. Which was great, because I could see the main band a lot better and all the pissed fighty arseholes were gone.

Black Bart said:
And what makes it even more complex is that "Maiden fans" engulfs a very large spectrum of people: some enjoyed Nightwish, some liked My Dying Bride, some were glad Queensrÿche opened for them (or Trivium, or Murderdolls, or Dream Theater, or Megadeth, or Helloween, or WASP...)... and none were "casting mistakes" as such, just that very diverse bands could fit the spot and be liked by a certain fraction of Maiden fans. There is no real focus, let alone when Bruce and Steve let their children open for them.
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It's definitely hard to pin down, and I think they sometimes guess at what "the kids" are into these days* when they choose Maiden support, or fall back on old school/retro because they know that's likely to appeal to Maiden fans of a certain age. Personally I love the idea of Sabaton as Maiden support, but a lot of people find them too cheesy to bear. Ghost was a master stroke for the US TBOS tour, though. Just that tiny bit of controversy a la NOTB that accompanied Maiden's original rise in the US, plus a band that was growing in appeal in the US anyway.

*Something I suspect Steve in particular is quite bad at.
 
I will never thank Maiden enough for introducing me to Ghost in 2014. Seeing them with Anthrax was also really cool. Unfortunately all the other times I saw them the supporting bands were really bad and annoying.
 
Again, someone on the Internet posted this picture of the current setlist - can Fear Of The Dark be part of the religion theme world... :confused:

4hWh4nD.jpg
 
Some thoughts on the set and the PLAY CLASSICS!!! thing:

While I'd gladly replace one or two songs from the "obvious classics" section with something more interesting, I have to say that they've really managed to get these songs sound very good; actually, most of the performances are the best ones for many years. For example, I just listened to The Trooper from the Stockholm gig; Bruce hasn't put this much effort to the delivery for ages. Or actually, there were some pretty awesome performances during TBOS tour too, so whatever they've talked about "every show being kinda sacred nowadays" and being "more excited about performing when they get older" etc. seems to be true to some extenct. However, Fear of the Dark is perhaps the most notable example of this: Bruce and co. really blew a lot of new life into it. The slower, heavier approach combined with Bruce's intense vocal delivery really makes the song work very well now, in contrast to what it has been for like... past decade or something: effective live song with a strong crowd reaction, yes, but somewhat dragging.

And then there's The Evil That Men Do; the slower, heavier approach worked very well in Maiden England tour too and brought it a bit closer to the original album version, unlike the faster, more aggressive (equally awesome, though) performances of it they favoured until AMOLAD tour, if I recall correctly.

Some of those songs are overplayed, yes, and I've always been eager for a change when it comes to their inclusion to the set(s), but when the execution is as strong as it is now, they work very well! It's just if they've replaced some of those songs during a couple of past tours with something else (example: 2MTM in TFF '11 or ME tours and FOTD on both previous history tours) their inclusion would have had much warmer "welcome back" effect even among us hardcore fans. While they have to play most of the big favourites time after another, I would have liked to see just a bit more variation with the choices. TBOS tour was a step to the right direction though, with Powerslave, Children of the Damned and Wasted Years. I hope they'll keep it like that. Something like Phantom of the Opera wouldn't hurt on next album tour etc. You get the point.
 
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Randalf said:
Some thoughts on the set and the PLAY CLASSICS!!! thing:

While I'd gladly replace one or two songs from the "obvious classics" section with something more interesting, I have to say that they've really managed to get these songs very good; actually, most of the performances are the best ones for many years. For example, I just listened to The Trooper from the Stockholm gig; Bruce hasn't put this much effort to the delivery for ages. Or actually, there were some pretty awesome performances during TBOS tour too, so whatever they've talked about "every show being kinda sacred nowadays" and being "more excited about performing when they get older" etc. seems to be true to some extenct. However, Fear of the Dark is perhaps the most notable example of this: Bruce and co. really blew a lot of new life into it. The slower, heavier approach combined with Bruce's intense vocal delivery really makes the song work very well now, in contrast to what it has been for like... past decade or something: effective live song with a strong crowd reaction, yes, but somewhat dragging.

And then there's The Evil That Men Do; the slower, heavier approach worked very well in Maiden England tour too and brought it a bit closer to the original album version, unlike the faster, more aggressive (equally awesome, though) performances of it they favoured until AMOLAD tour, if I recall correctly.

Some of those songs are overplayed, yes, and I've always been eager for a change when it comes to their inclusion to the set(s), but when the execution is as strong as it is now, they work very well! It's just if they've replaced some of those songs during a couple of past tours with something else (example: 2MTM in TFF '11 or ME tours and FOTD on both previous history tours) their inclusion would have had much warmer "welcome back" effect even among us hardcore fans. While they have to play most of the big favourites time after another, I would have liked to see just a bit more variation with the choices. TBOS tour was a step to the right direction though, with Powerslave, Children of the Damned and Wasted Years. I hope they'll keep it like that. Something like Phantom of the Opera wouldn't hurt on next album tour etc. You get the point.
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For the next album tour, I want 22AA and SIASL - I still believe in Nicko :D
 
Kalata said:
For the next album tour, I want 22AA and SIASL - I still believe in Nicko :D
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Well, if they'll do another (last?) history/best of/whatever tour after the (most likely) next album tour, I suppose either one of those two is a good candidate to be dusted off. They've always dusted off one or two truly rare songs, whether it's been tour tied to a specific era (History of Maiden tour) or just a general "best of" tour like the current one or Give Me 'Ed, so yeah, I could see it happening. I actually thought that SIASL was a song they could have brought in for the current tour; obviously, it didn't happen, but I still think it stands a change. Now when they're playing Icarus again, Stranger remains as the only big 80's classic single not properly (5 shows in 1999, yeah) played since the 80's. I know, Bruce isn't too fond of SIT, but he seems to like a couple of songs on it anyway and from what I've understood, he likes SIASL too. And if Steve(!) can get over the old Icarus grudge, I suppose Bruce wouldn't be too much against playing SIASL again, especially since he seemed to enjoy Wasted Years quite a lot. :)

So, I'm not expecting Alexander (first mention in the page 144!), but something like 22 Acacia Avenue or Stranger in a Strange Land seems plausible enough.
 
Kalata said:
Again, someone on the Internet posted this picture of the current setlist - can Fear Of The Dark be part of the religion theme world... :confused:

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The "theme" thing was a bit half-arsed. Not saying the stage didn't look great, but it was basically a cathedral theme covered by camouflage nets for the first couple of songs.
 
Well, looking at the rehearsal photos:
Adrian had his goldtop there and X-stroyer.

Janick has a new Fender 22-fret sunburst Strat, but it isn't used.

Dave had the Les Paul and the birthday strat in rehearsals.
 
Perun said:
The "theme" thing was a bit half-arsed. Not saying the stage didn't look great, but it was basically a cathedral theme covered by camouflage nets for the first couple of songs.
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Except for Fear of the Dark, I think it works very well up to the encore. War, cathedral, death/religion and hell at the end. If Fear of the Dark and Hallowed Be Thy Name had changed places it would have worked even better.
 
Perun said:
The "theme" thing was a bit half-arsed. Not saying the stage didn't look great, but it was basically a cathedral theme covered by camouflage nets for the first couple of songs.
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There is much more than just camouflage nets for the war theme: a Spitfire, barbed wire fences...
 
GhostofCain said:
There is much more than just camouflage nets for the war theme: a Spitfire, barbed wire fences...
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Yup. While the basic setup is pretty simple with camouflage nets just laying over the cathedral stage, I think that the additional props and the light show add quite a lot to it. Well done visual landscape.
 
Btw, why on setlist.fm a never played live Maiden songs are listed as a played ones :confused: and RTTH is listed as a song that have been played live once !

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Number 6 said:
Purely performancewise, yes. But I still maintain that they never again beat, or even achieved the energy peak of Live After Death and Beast Over Hammersmith. And that's why I hold both albums (LAD even a bit more than BOH) much higher than anything they released, or any tour after those.
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Speaking of pure energy, I don't think anything ever beats the 1981 Japan bootleg with Paul.
 
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