if a year agoIron Maiden gave in the olympic stadium a profile (unsuspected in other times) of a group for all audiences, what happened this Tuesday at the Palau Sant Jordi It was something else: a familiar familiarity with his fan-fans, the ones who could vibrate so much with his intricate last album, ‘Senjutsu’, like being moved by that remote song that the band had never played on previous ‘tours’. Quite hardcore Maiden session, wrapped in the space-time fantasy of this tour baptized as ‘The future past tour’.
The pandemic torpedoed the plans and made them introduce songs from ‘Senjutsu’ (2021) on the greatest hits tour, but now they, avoiding repeating themselves, select songs from the album that they did not play then (with the exception of ‘The writing on the wall’ ). Which, together with the rescue of an album appreciated but little traveled over the years, ‘Somewhere in time’ (1986), precipitates the enthusiasm of the fans. This is how the clientele is taken care of, although later, as is their custom, there are no surprises in the ‘setlist’ from one night to the next.
The Art of War
All of this spoke to us at Sant Jordi (“once again, complete ‘sold out’& rdquor;, celebrated Bruce Dickinson) of a heavy metal session in his orthodox affiliation, open to the hymn, but also to tortuous dynamics. The replays of ‘Caught somewhere in time’ and ‘Stranger in a stranger land’, which opened the session, recalled that at that time, 1986, Maiden was already trying to move into the future (including now imperceptible synthesized guitars).
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That path would lead them to these current, suffocating and convoluted pieces like ‘The time machine’ and ‘Death of celts’, to the greater glory of the art of war and strategy. Now paired with ‘Alexander the great’, a song performed for the first time on this tour, with good resolution, and which sings the deeds of the Macedonian hero. And slipping into the web of guitars by Murray, Smith and Gers, and the bass of the always fiery Steve Harris, the indispensable mascot Eddie, this time in the form of a gunslinger, with whom Dickinson exchanged a pyrotechnic shootout.
Even taking distances with the ‘greatest hits’, the script was not as dense as that night in 2006 on the same stage. There was no place for ‘Run to the hills’, but some singable choruses cleverly invoked the law of compensation: the unusual ‘The prisoner’, first, and on the way to the summits, trophies like ‘Can I play with madness’ , the galloping ‘The trooper’ and the melancholic ‘Wasted years’. Effective material from yesterday, today and tomorrow, it doesn’t matter, Iron Maiden came to tell us. The first chorus of the night already said it: “Time is always on my side.”