Iron Maiden Ignites Sold-Out Austin Crowd: Review and Photos

Bruce Dickinson warned followers that Iron Maiden can be bringing Senjutsu to an enviornment close to them when the steel legends resumed their Legacy of the Beast tour this 12 months. “Everybody should know the first three tracks,” the singer stated of the band’s thundering 2021 album. “And we’ll have a stage set to go with it. Once you’ve done that, you’re back to the kind of Legacy world at that point.”

The 15,000-plus followers at Austin’s Moody Center on Tuesday, the second evening of the band’s present U.S. leg, apparently did their homework. The sold-out crowd roared with ecstasy because the band plowed by Senjutsu’s first three songs — the bellicose title monitor, the galloping “Stratego” and the swashbuckling “The Writing on the Wall” — echoing Dickinson’s hovering choruses again at him.

The English metallurgists then made good on their promise, breaking out Piece of Mind album lower “Revelations” because the Japanese minka set items gave option to a wide ranging chapel with varied iterations of their beloved Eddie mascot showing within the stained-glass home windows. The remainder of the band’s triumphant two-hour set proceeded equally to its 2019 Legacy of the Beast dates, with a number of tracks like “Where Eagles Dare” and “The Wicker Man” being dropped to make room for the opening Senjutsu volley.

Although the set record modifications on this trek are minor, they emphasize one in every of Iron Maiden’s most admirable qualities: their willingness to give equal weight and credence to each chapter of their storied profession. The grizzled sexagenarians (save for drummer Nicko McBrain, who turned 70 this 12 months) might have simply coasted on their inimitable run of ’80s masterpieces, from 1982’s The Number of the Beast by 1988’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. Instead, they intermingled these classics with the aforementioned Senjutsu tracks, which they carried out with vigor and fury, and they lent magisterial muscle to Blaze Bayley-era epics “Sign of the Cross” and “The Clansman.”

The viewers lapped these songs up like pigs in slop, a testomony to Maiden followers’ countless devotion. And whereas there was no matching the group’s rabid pleasure upon listening to an epochal mid-’80s basic, the band carried out each music with the facility of prizefighters and the spectacle of Vegas showmen. Dickinson shot fireplace from a dual-wielding flamethrower throughout “Flight of Icarus,” fenced with a supersized Eddie throughout “The Trooper” and toyed with a noose as he led the viewers in a climactic “Hallowed Be Thy Name” singalong. The near-deafening crowd even helped the singer regain his footing when he acquired off time in the course of the intro to “Run to the Hills,” and they went pound-for-pound with him in the course of the music’s heroic choruses.

When Dickinson wasn’t turning followers to putty together with his full-throated screams, the remainder of the band basked of their rapturous applause. Guitarists Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers traded fleet-fingered solos and teased out the songs’ hypnotic, nearly tribal melodies, whereas McBrain and bassist Steve Harris trotted out their well-oiled machine-gun gallop in music after music, spurring the followers on the standing-room ground to leap till their ankles howled in protest.

As at all times, Iron Maiden primarily let the music do the speaking on Tuesday, although Dickinson — who carried out at Austin’s much-smaller Paramount Theatre in February as a part of his spoken-word tour — briefly alluded to the escalating sociopolitical turmoil that is torn the United States asunder in recent times. “If you’re part of the Iron Maiden family, we don’t give a fuck where you’re from … we’re all blood brothers!” the singer declared because the band tore into the selection lower from 2000’s Brave New World.

The proclamation might need sounded contrived coming from a lesser band, however Maiden’s crowd took it as a honest and badly wanted gesture of solidarity, particularly within the wake of the coronavirus pandemic that is remoted reside music lovers and stored Maiden off the street for 3 years. “Tonight, that shit is done!” Dickinson introduced with the identical snarling defiance that turned Iron Maiden into steel royalty and has stored them there for greater than 40 years.

Needless to say, at any time when the frontman delivered his trademark exhortation — “Scream for me, Austin!” — Austin fortunately obliged.

Iron Maiden, 9/13/22, Moody Center, Austin
1. “Senjutsu”
2. “Stratego”
3. “The Writing on the Wall”
4. “Revelations”
5. “Blood Brothers”
6. “Sign of the Cross”
7. “Flight of Icarus”
8. “Fear of the Dark”
9. “Hallowed Be Thy Name”
10. “The Number of the Beast”
11. “Iron Maiden”
12. “The Trooper”
13. “The Clansman”
14. “Run to the Hills”
15. “Aces High”