Reviewed by Martin
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City: Gothenburg, Sweden
Venue: Ullevi
Date: 1 July 2011
Set length: approx. 90 minutes

Iron Maiden

The fact that Iron Maiden still are touring like energized 30-year olds is a fact worth celebration. With the concert last Friday I have seen the band four times, and have always held the band livecapacity as a truly high one, despite that the band can seem a bit unfocused on record.

The stage, a production of usual size for an Iron Maiden show, is formed like a spacestation - and the band fully utilizes the size of the stage, especially Bruce Dickinson who is more often than not running around at full pelt. You can of course see that the members have gotten older - a comment not rare in the pit - but the band can still very much deliver a kick ass performance.

The band's summer tours are often dedicated to playing older material - and we get a fair share of this - but it's nice to see that the band refuses to become a boombox that only play expected songs like Run To The Hills, a song that fortunately is missing from the setlist this evening. Maiden servers up five songs from latest release The Final Frontier: Satellite 15…The Final Frontier, El Dorado, The Talisman, Coming Home and When The Wild Wind Blows, and even though the band plays the two first songs much too slow the songs are greeted with thunderous applause.

Although there is a big difference between how the new songs versus the oldies are received - after relatively old The Wicker Man the crowd screams and applauds for over five minutes - so long that Bruce can hardly believe what he is experiencing, only to get an even bigger scream when he announces the next song, Blood Brothers.

This is also where the concert takes off - the band plays and the crowd sings with such force that one would be stupid not to see that Iron Maiden still has the capacity to ignite a crowd. Concluding six songs, The Evil That Men Do, Fear Of The Dark, Iron Maiden, The Number Of The Beast, Hallowed Be Thy Name and Running Free are somewhat worn out if you have followed the band for a while, but the energy displayed by the band in these songs are so strong you can almost touch it.

Iron Maiden does not reach the level the band had the first time I saw them in 1999 in Scandinavium, and not the gig at Wacken in 2008, but are still playing at a level that at times are so high that one can not be other than impressed.

7 chalices of 10

Setlist:

Satellite 15…The Final Frontier
El Dorado
Two Minutes To Midnight
The Talisman
Coming Home
Dance Of Death
The Trooper
The Wicker Man
Blood Brothers
When The Wild Wind Blows
The Evil That Men Do
Fear Of The Dark
Iron Maiden
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The Number Of The Beast
Hallowed Be Thy Name
Running Free

Related links:
www.ironmaiden.com