Iron Maiden at 3Arena: ‘Scream for me Dublin’ – ageing rockers belie their age with a powerhouse performance

Iron Maiden

3Arena, Dublin

★★★★☆

What do you do as a live act when you have a back catalogue like Iron Maiden?

If the band never produced another song, they could have traded for the rest of their days off their 1980s output, from their eponymous debut album to No Prayer for the Dying in 1990.

Uniquely among big acts, Iron Maiden have no songs they have to play. For this tour have they ditched standards including Number of the Beast, Aces High, Hallowed be thy Name, Run to the Hills, Powerslave and so many others.

Most 1980s metalheads who grew up with this band, and they were the majority of the crowd at the 3Arena, crave another nostalgia hit, but forearmed is forewarned. Iron Maiden did a greatest hits tour in 2022 including a date at Belsonic in Belfast. If you missed it, too bad.

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They did play from their back catalogue Caught Somewhere in Time, The Prison, Can I Play with Madness, Heaven Can Wait, Fear of the Dark, Iron Maiden and as an encore The Trooper and Wasted Years.

The Future Past world tour is all about the most recent album, Senjutsu, which was released in 2021. Iron Maiden dropped a song into their set, The Death of the Celts, which is less of a song and more of a composition. It meanders through multiple movements clocking in at more than 10 minutes, beginning slowly, as many Iron Maiden songs do, and picking up the tempo as it goes along involving the band’s three guitarists picking through intricate parts while a Celtic backdrop of headstones, swords and thick forest billows in the background.

Singer Bruce Dickinson notes the irony of a song called Death of the Celts when there are 12,000 headbanging Celts in situ at the 3Arena. He also dedicated The Writing on the Wall, another song from Senjutsa, to the “dystopian present”.

Dickinson (64), a throat cancer survivor, remains a marvel. He bounds around the stage cajoling the crowd, “Scream for me Dublin!”, while wearing a great overcoat on a sweltering night. Iron Maiden have been rocking against the dying of the light for decades now and refuse to become their own tribute band.

On this tour they have included Alexander the Great, a song from their 1986 album Somewhere in Time. It’s part musical epic and part history lesson. Like Alexander the Great, there are no more worlds for Iron Maiden to conquer except one.

Why has this great British band never played Glastonbury? How does a plodding pub band like Arctic Monkeys – who cancelled a Dublin gig last Tuesday – get to headline the Pyramid Stage and not Iron Maiden?

The template was set for heavy metal bands when Metallica played in 2014. While Iron Maiden were playing in front of 12,000 fans in Dublin, Axl Rose and Guns N’ Roses played in front of 200,000 people at Worthy Farm and a television audience of millions.

Guns N’Roses had one decent album, released back in the musical equivalent of the Napoleonic era, and haven’t produced any new music for 30 years. The exorable Chinese Democracy doesn’t count.

Iron Maiden continue to record and play great music. They have never let their standards slip, yet, for the general public, they remain music’s best kept secret.