Iron Maiden
(with geusts: Murderdolls)
Hartwall Area, Helsinki, Finland
June 30th, 2003
Pics and text By Arto Lehtinen, Marko
Syrjälä
British heavy metal legends, Iron Maiden, have enjoyed a massive and
loyal following in Finland (like everywhere else on this planet) since the
very early 80's. Despite Blaze Bayley's short stint in the Maiden ranks in
the mid 90's, the diehard Finnish Maiden fans never turned their backs on
them.
After the golden throat Bruce Dickinson had returned to Maiden it
literally catapulted the band into another dimension of incredible
successful achievement. The 13,000 seat of the Hartwall arena was sold out
within two hours and there would have been another 13,000 outside willing
to get the tickets to testify Maiden in action. The same thing happened in
Sweden where app 32,000 crazy Swedish Maiden freaks had entered to testify
their idols and at the Roskilde fest there were 50,000 bangers sharing the
same fear of the dark feeling.
For some reason "the freak Yankee combo" Murderdolls, known
for being a side project run by the Slipknot drummer Joey Jordison on the
guitars, had been booked as the warm up band for Maiden on their European
crusade. It wasn't any big surprise that many people kept showing the
international middle finger sign to the Murderdolls guys thru their set
and apparently some bitter comments were shouted from the audience when
the vocalist was forced to respond by giving out of sense comments. Even
though the Hanoi Rocks ghost looking guitarist showed up on the stage, but
it didn't bring too many positive points for the b-class punk/glam "wanna
be" shock rockers! This band clearly doesn't belong in huge arenas at
least yet and also maybe Iron Maiden is not the best possible headliner
for these kinds of looking and sounding guys... But how about Marilyn
Manson, Dolls?
The feeling before Maidens invaded the stage was incredible in the huge
arena. People appeared to be in the waiting tension doing massive waves
around the area like in a hockey match and the noise went over the
tolerance of pain, as it was really huge…
The gig got a prestigious ballistic kick off when the immortal six
hundred sixty six slogans roared from monitors and the audience went
totally "apeshit" when "The Number Of The Beast" was
unleashed and continued by more crossfire of the greatest Maiden tunes of
all time. For example, "The Trooper" and "Hallowed Be Thy
Name" hit every maiden freak in the Hartwall arena like a ten ton
hammer. The reaction of the crowd could be described as a hotter than hell
atmosphere, especially in the front line where the pressure grew to the
inhuman level. The security barrier was about to fail until Bruce
Dickinson announced that barrier is a piece of shit and asked people to
take a step back so that the barrier could be fixed. Even though the
beginning of the set was mostly based on the tracks off from the classic
albums of the heavy metal history Piece
Of Mind and Number Of The
Beast even one brand new track, picked up from the upcoming Dance
Of Death album called "Wildest Dreams" has been added to
the set list of which Dickinson kept quite a funny introduction by
demanding the crowd to bring up the recording equipment to tape the new
song. As far as "Wildest Dreams" is concerned, it sounds like a
pure Maiden tune, not giving any big surprise. Even though the newer
material of Maiden is bloody strong, however only two tracks were played
from Bruce's comeback album. "The Wicker Man" and title track
"Brave New World" had found their ways to the set list, being
brilliant tracks matching along with the classic ones damn well. Also
"Clansman" from Bayley's era album off from Virtual
XI was played and it truly reached a entire brand new level when
Mr. Dickinson was behind the microphone singing it.
As usual some extra things had been set up for this Maiden gig, for
example a bunch of Finnish Maiden fans had got an utterly huge gift to
enter the stage to sing the chorus parts of "Heaven Can Wait".
Things didn't turn out as planned cos some wise guy torn his shirt apart
in order to show his trained body and muscles and tried to hug Mr. Murray,
but after all got groped by the security guy by moving this middle aged
little Arnold Schwarzenegger to the safety distance from the whole band.
Of course the ever famous mascot Eddie visited the stage during
"The Clairvoyant" spinning around on the stage and looked one
kind of king oriented monster with the crown and cape. During the Maiden
self titled battle hymn, a huge Eddie head rose behind from the drum kits
and head got wide opened to where Eddie's missing brains were put back.
Bruce
Dickinson was definitely in good shape during the whole massive two hour
gig as running around the stage like one kind of maniac, making the
audience shout and make waves. But instead Harris has calmed down a lot
since his early days even though being in good shape, but didn't run and
jump around that much as he used to do. Janick Gers acted like a clown all
the time whereas the double guitarist Adrian Smith and Dave Murray did
their job in the expected sophisticated perfect and brilliant way. As
usual, audience wasn't able to testify the drum works by the drummer Nicko
McBrain too much when he is hidden behind his massive drum kit, but he was
clearly heard by everyone and when it was time to give away a set of
drumsticks he got a huge cheers from "desperate" fans. Of course
he performed a nice looking war dance behind his drum artillery.
The crowd was in one hell of a tension though the whole gig, kept
singing by heart and by soul and damn loud. That kind of passionate
intensive dedication on gigs have never been testified ever before, it was
definitely a piece of evidence of Maiden's being loyal and fanatical fans
toward the old classic metal from England!
SETLIST:
The Number of the Beast
The Trooper
Die with your Boots on
Hallowed be thy Name
Revelations
22 Acacia Avenue
Wildest Dreams
The Wicker Man
Brave New World
The Clansman
Heaven can wait
The Clairvoyant
Fear of the Dark
Iron Maiden
---------
Bring your Daughter... to the Slaughter
2 Minutes to Midnight
Run to the Hills
