The Official Book of Souls Tour 2016 Thread (Warning: Spoilers within!)

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The final flight with Ed Force One this year to Landvetter Airport.

Ullevi tomorrow. :)
 
I caught sight of her as we came in to land at Oslo, but didn't get the chance to go looking on the ground. I also saw it right off in the distance landing at East Midlands on Saturday, and got a quick snap of it as the festival shuttle bus went past the airport.
 
I bet there's at least one person among the tour crew who today thought "thank god, another year in which we didn't die in a horrible plane crash" :D

I know I would be that person - I think that thought after each flight I'm on. :P
 
This is corny as hell, but watching Bruce's Flying Heavy Metal documentary series went a long way towards helping with my fear of flying. I just picture the pilot being all blasé like Bruce. It's certainly reassuring actually hearing that voice coming through the intercom on a plane.
 
Now that I've had a day and a little more to digest the show, I will say this - very happy with the setlist. The selection of songs from the new album was as expected, but I was pleasantly surprised by the choices they made from the back catalog. Especially Children and Powerslave, two of my absolute favourite songs. Also, Blood Brothers as part of the encore worked great. Both band and crowd were very into it.

General impression of the band, they were as passionate as always (if not more) and they are still a well-oiled machine. There was a little hiccup in IESF, apart from that the playing was tight as it should be.

No signs of a band who are looking forward to retirement :D
 
I didn't notice the IESF hiccup....nothing compared to the jumble that was the end of the instrumental part at Download. Having seen Maiden at two shows in a row, I now wonder if Bruce's voice going missing on the higher notes was a microphone problem, as I thought after Download, or his voice not having enough power on those high notes. Not that it mattered too much, his signing was still excellent. As Steve said some time ago, Bruce at operating at 75% is still better than most people.
 
http://www.blabbermouth.net/news/ir...ns-cancer-scare-playing-china-for-first-time/

This interview was posted in another thread, but I don't know how many of you have noticed this very interesting bit:
On the restrictions IRON MAIDEN faced while playing in China for the first time:

Steve: "It wasn't too bad. I thought it was gonna be worse, actually. But they [the Chinese authorities] wouldn't let Bruce use the British flag — well, any flag. 'Cause we said, 'Can we use the Chinese flag?' And they wouldn't let that either. So that was a bit odd. But there were a few things. There was a really weird one where they said on the actual written setlist that we have on stage, we had to write a different song for 'Poweslave', but we could play the song. It was just… okay. [Laughs] So we wrote 'The Wicker Man' in, and Bruce actually sang 'The Wicker Man' on the first chorus; it was sort of a joke. But it was really odd things like that. I don't know why they do things like that; only they know the answer to that. But it was fine. We still put on a show. The crowd were great. I mean, they were much better than I thought, actually; the reaction was really, really good. I don't know what I was expecting, really, but I didn't think they would be as good as they were, to be honest. And all good, really. And I got to see The Great Wall, which I've always wanted to do. So, yeah, fantastic."
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Finally! The Wicker Man/Powerslave mistery solved. Weird, indeed...
 
Brigantium said:
Having seen Maiden at two shows in a row, I now wonder if Bruce's voice going missing on the higher notes was a microphone problem, as I thought after Download, or his voice not having enough power on those high notes.
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He wasn't that good (I'm mild here) on some of the higher notes in Oslo. It clearly went better in Arnhem. So, the tour takes some toll as it progresses.

@Adrian leaving out the solo in Gothenburg:
That's odd, seeing Adrian suddenly playing these chords instead. Never done before, unless we count the studio recording itself!
 
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