Hello all! Decided to create an account here just to comment on yesterday's gig in Finland.
This was my third Maiden concert. First one was in 2010, the second on the Maiden England tour in 2013 and now almost 10 years later on this tour. Maiden is my all time favourite and most meaningful band so it's quite strange that it's been this long, haha.
I have to say, the band was in great shape. It's impossible to beat the gig from 2010 in Sonisphere (where we had a big storm which destroyed the stage and the festival area and Maiden still played their full set 2 hours late from schedule, in complete darkness which is not a given in Finland during the summertime) but this was definitely a better experience than in 2013.
It seems like Bruce's voice is in better shape than it was before Covid times. He was also seemingly in a very good mood yesterday, with lots of energy and stage shenanigans. The tempos of some songs are quite slow nowadays (Revelations, Run to the Hills, Aces High etc.) but when you are in the heat of the front part of the audience everything's great and you don't really care. Sign of the Cross also had quite a slow tempo, and a festival setting is not the best circumstance for a performance like this, but I absolutely loved having that song in the set.
My personal favourite moments:
- The Writing on the Wall and Adrian's amazing solo (which was a bit different this time compared to what I've heard from previous gigs)
- Fear of the Dark. Yes, it's been played to death but when you are surrounded by people with their hands in the air singing your hearts out to those melodies, it's just absolutely brilliant.
- The ending of Run to the Hills with Bruce running from the explosions and doing the big TNT bang when the song crashes to a close. The audience went bananas.
A couple of tidbits: It takes a very long time after TWOTW to tear down the Senjutsu themed stuff from the stage. This was especially awkward in a festival concert like this in the middle of a very illuminated Finnish summer evening where you don't have the cover of darkness. Crew people running around, the band members standing around waiting. Steve made a yawning/tapping his wrist gesture to the people in the front row at one point when the hassle had been going on for a while, that was quite funny.
Bruce led the audience into sing happy birthday to Nicko after Aces, that was a very memorable moment for sure! They also posted a video from it:
Happy Birthday Nicko! (Part 2) #IronMaiden #LegacyOfTheBeastWorldTour #NickoMcBrain
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