Sound Island

Location: Makuhari Messe, Tokyo
Date: Feb 16, 2008

The show was opened by Lauren Harris who as you might know time to time happens to accompany Iron Maiden as a supporting band. I definitely liked their set and I suppose the majority of others were also pleased a lot. It was a really lovely glam/hard-rock performance with easy-to-listen themes and the pretty nice girl at the vocal. Surprisingly, the guitar sound was rich and sufficient despite the fact that there was the only guitar besides of bass.

Iron Maiden itself was just super. The first song - Aces High - put the crowd into a terrible mess. Everyone were shouting, jumping and pushing each other during that “dance of death”. I believe Iron Maiden are the ones who really never betray their fans’ expectations. Their performances are always full of enthusiasm and have not a hint of insincerity which have some commercialized bands. The members are still full of energy as their were in 80’s.

Bruce Dickinson was climbing up and down all the several levels of stage, demonstrating his perfect physical shape. No need to say it was typical for him to swing British flag on The Trooper and to shout “Scrrrrrrrream for me Tokyo” at those moments he usually do that. Also, during the show he changed the clothes frequently so for almost every song he had a different fanciful appearance.

The concept of scene decorations was based on Ancient Egypt and background themes, as it is easy to guess, represented different reincarnations of Eddie. Following the tradition, a giant Eddie appeared right at the stage during the “Iron Maiden” song, schocking the audience by its awesome size and aiming the huge blaster into the crowd. The way Eddie moves through the stage is still a big mystery for me.

Unfortunately, I am not able to present you the accurate set-list played but for the most part it included Iron Maiden’s “classical” songs, such as those from the albums Seventh Son of the Seventh Son, Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast and Somewhere In Time.

When the live is over, all of us were completely exhausted but nevertheless totally happy. It was with no doubt a really great event for all the lovers of high-quality heavy metal.

To my great surprise I met Sam Dunn at the Makuhari Messe and he told me he was there to shoot his new documentary which is gonna be about Iron Maiden. So I hope we can see it on DVD soon.

P.S. By the way, what seems to be strange about this world tour is that Iron Maiden is going to visit Bombey, India which looks a bit irrational at the whole tour map. Is there a special reason why they decided to play there?

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 17th, 2008 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Gig reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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