There are reasonable people who insist that the eternal Priest-or-Maiden argument is pointless, that both bands are great in their own right and that heavy metal is richer for having them both. Reasonable people are boring. Tonight belongs to Iron Maiden.
First, however, there is The Raven Age. The London quintet deals in competent but spectacularly anonymous modern metal, the sort of music that seems engineered specifically to occupy the first forty minutes of an arena bill. Their continued presence on major tours becomes somewhat less mysterious once you remember that guitarist George Harris is Steve Harris' son. Iron Maiden have a long history of bringing their offspring's bands on the road. Family values, heavy-metal style.
Then comes the ritual. UFO's “Doctor Doctor” blasts through the PA, the lights fall, Churchill's wartime speech begins and suddenly a full-size Spitfire is hanging over the stage while Iron Maiden tears into “Aces High.” Subtle it isn't. Nor should it be. Within minutes the AccorHotels Arena has been transformed into the gigantic heavy-metal playground Maiden has spent four decades constructing.
The Legacy of the Beast production is enormous, but its real achievement is coherence. Individual backdrops, props and theatrical sequences give each song its own visual world while remaining part of the same larger spectacle. War, religion, mythology, death and assorted manifestations of Eddie tumble past as the band moves through the catalogue, mixing the unavoidable classics with less obvious choices, including material from the much-maligned Blaze Bayley years. It could easily become an expensive collection of heavy-metal clichés. Instead, the clichés become the language of the show.
Bruce Dickinson is the man charged with making all of this nonsense believable. He races across the stage, fences with a giant Eddie, waves flags, changes costumes, addresses the audience extensively in French and somehow still has enough oxygen left to sing the songs. More importantly, he doesn't merely deliver them. He acts them out. Every lyric becomes another excuse for movement, character and drama. At nearly sixty, Dickinson remains one of metal's great frontmen because he performs as though standing still might kill him.
The personalities around him are just as distinct. Dave Murray remains the smiling, affable counterweight to all the bombast, peeling off those unmistakably fluid leads with apparent effortlessness. Adrian Smith brings the sharpest guitar work of the three, economical where Maiden can sometimes be excessive, with a gift for solos that feel composed rather than merely played. Janick Gers occupies another universe entirely. He prances, pirouettes, throws his guitar around and occasionally appears to regard actually playing it as an irritating distraction. His detractors have a point. They're also missing the fun. One Janick Gers dancing around like a deranged ballerina is worth a dozen metal guitarists standing motionless and trying desperately to look evil.
Nicko McBrain is largely concealed behind a camouflage-covered drum kit, occasionally emerging above it while driving the machinery underneath. A few slips creep in over the two nights, but the band absorbs them without drama. And then there is Steve Harris, galloping away at the centre of the operation, mouthing every lyric, firing his bass at the crowd and occasionally mocking Dickinson when one of the singer's speeches begins threatening the running time. Maiden may have become an enormous institution, but Harris still plays like the whole thing could collapse if he relaxes for thirty seconds.
That is ultimately what separates Iron Maiden from most bands operating at this level. The production is colossal, meticulously sequenced and repeated almost identically from night to night, yet the musicians inside it still generate the sweaty, slightly unruly energy of a metal gig. The Spitfire, flames, costumes and giant monsters provide the spectacle; the songs provide the scale.
With a catalogue this deep, somebody will always complain about what wasn't played. It hardly matters. The pacing, song selection and visuals have been assembled into one continuous piece of heavy-metal theatre, ridiculous in precisely the ways heavy metal ought to be ridiculous and thrilling for exactly the same reason. Four decades after Iron Maiden began dreaming on this scale, few bands can make an arena feel this enormous—or heavy metal feel this much fun. Up the Irons!
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