Review: Iron Maiden at RAC Arena

Iron Maiden at RAC Arena
w/ Killswitch Engage
Sunday, September 1, 2024

Riding the coattails of their glorious 2021 epic, Senjutsu, UK rock gods Iron Maiden finally made their hugely anticipated return to Oz, levelling RAC Arena on Sunday night. Their first time back since the 2016 Book of Souls tour, the band stands at the precipice of their 50th anniversary next year with absolutely no signs of slowing down.

To kick things off, Western Massachusetts heavyweights Killswitch Engage took to the stage with all guns blazing. Fans of As Daylight Dies were in for a treat as the band opened with the thumping, high-energy fist-pumper My Curse before rolling straight into This Fire, a pummelling double-kick assault laid out to a roaring reception.

The remainder of the set was largely fuelled by neck-wrecking American thrash hooks with no shortage of heavy grooves, chugs, pinch-harmonics, dive-bombs and breakdowns, with an impressive array of vocal textures, powerful backing harmonies and growls. In between tracks Strength of Mind and The Arms of Sorrow, vocalist Jesse Leach introduced the band as a bunch of “piece o’ shit drunks from the United States." Pundits loved it, with their more committed fans hosting a massive presence front and centre, relishing Leach’s request to get the circle pit pumping—setting off the night’s first wave of crowd surfers.

An energetic and versatile frontman, Leach held out the mic as the crowd sang B-lines for the chorus in Rose of Sharyn, uniting fans in the Mike Patton-esque celebration of love and grief. After nearly 25 years of service to the heavy metal world, the band returned to a few of their fan favourites from the early 2000s to see out the end of their set. For the finale, Leach requested a show of hands for the late, great Ronnie James Dio before launching into a severely beefed-up version of Holy Diver. Here, we found the most raucous unified crowd vocal participation of their set, with the audience keeping up with the entire song.

The guitarists also flexed their prowess in a blistering solo trade-off, which would surely earn a nod of respect from the song’s original lead player, Vivian Campbell. With Leach declaring that this was one of the “wildest shows they’d ever played” in Australia, Killswitch fostered a high-octane intensity that was ripe for the UK titans to follow.

The Iron Maiden set began with a barren, dimly lit stage, as soaring guitar harmonies from the opening intro to 1986’s seminal Somewhere In Time set the arena ablaze with excitement. Once the intro kicked into the first head-banging riff, the band exploded out onto the stage in full force, driven by one of Steve Harris’ signature, galloping basslines, and a whopping assault of pyrotechnics. As the four axe-wielding string-punishers took their places, vocal wizard Bruce Dickinson came bounding out with the speed, tenacity and theatrics of an 80s WWF superstar, ready to take on an army. His wild theatrics were rivalled only by guitarist Janick Gers, who seemed to twist stage-antic elements of Jimi Hendrix, Richie Blackmore, Yngwie Malmsteen and more into one mad conglomeration.

Often seen machine-gunning the crowd with his Fender Strat, swinging 360-degree windies with his strumming hand that’d blow your hair back, and taking every opportunity to air his balls, hoisting one pearly-white high-top sneaker onto a nearby quad-box while thrusting his guitar at the crowd. He had to keep busy since this particular setlist was compiled mainly of songs credited to the other members.

Maiden steamrolled immediately into Adrian Smith’s most dangerous contribution to the Somewhere In Time album, which saw the night’s first appearance of Maiden mascot Eddie, who stormed the stage in his cyborg cowboy get-up as the Stranger in a Strange Land.

The Future Past Tour centres on Maiden’s Somewhere In Time and Shenjutsu albums, while including a handful of select crowd favourites from other releases. Speaking of crowd favourites, Steve Harris may have been still revelling from his recent victory, only a few nights earlier, where he participated in a fundraising match for a local soccer club at Balcatta’s Macedonia Park. Allegedly, he ran rings around his opponents and scored a mad ninja goal for the winning team. Now, he was taking his aggression out on his bass and a 15,000-strong crowd that only grew more adoring as the night went on.

Only two songs in, and already enough adrenaline-fuelled action to make a less-adventurous concertgoer piss their pants, the band took a moment for their fearless leader to address their hungry audience. Dickinson entertained with jokes about quokkas and his fear of sharks before rolling into our first taste of Senjutsu with a shoutout, “This one’s like Mad Max!” reigniting the crowd for The Writing On The Wall.

Each track landed with monolithic strength, but for this reviewer, highlight numbers included Heaven Can Wait, Alexander the Great and Hell On Earth. Like true stadium rock royalty, the band offered up a kingly three-song encore that splintered RAC Arena and cemented the performance as one to be remembered.

At the start of the concert, Maiden opened with the track Caught Somewhere in Time, in which Dickinson repeats the line “Time is always on my side." Judging by this performance, time has been truly kind to the British rock juggernauts, still pulverising and inspiring audiences after all these years. Poetically, the concert ended with the emotionally charged balltearer Wasted Years, which emphasises the importance of living in the present. Clearly, no years have been wasted in the Maiden universe.

If you’re anywhere near one of Iron Maiden’s upcoming Australian shows, don’t miss the opportunity to catch Eddy and the boys on the remaining Future Past Tour dates:

Wednesday, September 4: Adelaide Entertainment Centre, Adelaide
Friday, September 6: Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
Saturday, September 7: Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne
Tuesday, September 10: Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane
Thursday, September 12: Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney
Friday, September 13: Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney

CAIN CRESSALL

Photos by Adrian Thomson