The Chaos of Precision - An Iron Maiden / Alice Cooper Concert Review

The Chaos of Precision

An Iron Maiden / Alice Cooper Concert Review

Five years ago, I saw my very first Iron Maiden concert. It was a windy and rainy night at the beginning and the opening act was terrible. But that all went away once Iron Maiden took the stage and delivered a thundering performance that just blew me away.

Fast forward to Tuesday June 26th, 2012 and it was time to celebrate Maiden again. Just so you know, my mom rocks! No, she isn't a musician and she actually doesn't like rock and roll in the least. But it was due to her that both my brother and I were going to the show. She bought us the tickets for our individual birthday presents. ROCK ON MOM!

The day of the show saw me leave work early so I could "prepare" for witnessing the event that is a Maiden show. I picked up my brother and a short, uneventful and relatively harmless car ride later and we were in Mansfield, Massachusetts at The Great Woods Center for the Performing Arts. Okay, it is currently called The Comcast Center, but I hate that cold and bloodless corporate name and always refer to the venue by its original name.

A short walk to the gates, the display of the tickets to get scanned and entry was achieved. Being a child of the 80's metal movement, I had to hit the souvenir stand to buy myself some future advertising for the band. You can tell how long it has been since I've been to a concert because I nearly had a heart attack when I saw they wanted $40 for a concert T-shirt. Hey, I want a shirt as much as the next fan, but I want to wear the shirt, not date it. So I ended up passing on the purchase of a T-shirt and we went in search of our seats.

Unlike the last time we saw the band, this time we were actually under the venue's pavilion so when it sprinkled rain for about 5 minutes, we were mostly protected. I say mostly because we were at the back of Section 4 which left our backs exposed to whatever elements might arise to cause havoc.

Anyone who has gone to a show knows that most everyone is still filing in during the opening act. This was the case on this night as well. The mystifying thing to me was that it was ALICE FREAKING COOPER that was opening! How could you miss out on the master of shock rock?

I'd seen Alice Cooper once before and loved his show, but I have to say that this time around he was even better. The show opened with a sinister sounding voice over and the band immediately launched into "The Black Widow" with Cooper preaching the lyrics atop his own macabre pulpit. The band was ferocious throughout the set, as Cooper descended the stairs from his "bully" pulpit to rage through "Brutal Planet". To be honest, I can't recall ever hearing the song before but I do know it was my favorite song from the band on the evening. Guitarist Orianthi was lights out both with her six-string shredding and subtle makeup job with the bloody mouth dripping down her neck. The classic "I'm 18" still sounds fresh and vibrant despite Cooper being more almost 4 decades past the age of 18 himself.

The set continued through "No More Mr. Nice Guy", "Hey Stoopid" and "Billion Dollar Babies" then moved on to another Cooper track I love, "Feed My Frankenstein". Making this track stand out was the last portion of the song when Alice himself left the stage and a prop version of Alice with the super enlarged head came out. You could still hear the vocals from Cooper but it was the prop, with lips that actually moved in time to the lyrics, closing out the song.

And that's just a portion of the showmanship and theatrics you get from an Alice Cooper show. He is performing a heavy metal theatrical performance and this leads to having very little to no verbal interraction with the crowd during the show. And for Cooper's particular brand of performance it works. Instead of revving up the crowd by talking, you get a prop Alice Cooper. After "Poison" came the song "Wicked Young Man" with Cooper dressed up in a creepier version of military garb and bringing to lyrical life a thorough reprehensible guy. Theatrical stageplay gave us a stabbing and the traditional decapitation by guillotine of Cooper himself. And that leaves out the electrocution we witnessed as well. The creepy "I Love The Dead" led into the set closer rock anthem "School's Out" which had everyone screaming out the chorus. It was perfectly timed for the area as schools have only just ended their year. Cooper ended the song by throwing in a couple of verses from the Pink Floyd song "Another Brick In The Wall", his vocal style making those lyrics sound pretty menacing.

Despite the bad rap we heavy metal fans tend to get, there is a big community that evolves quickly at a concert. We advertise our band choices by the T-shirts we wear (besides the requisite Maiden and Cooper shirts, I saw shirts for Blind Guardian, Metallica, Opeth, Accept and many more.) Granted we have the nitwits, like the idiotic Cooper fan who appeared both drunk and stoned before his set even started. Loud and obnoxious, most people that viewed his "act" either laughed AT him or shook their heads in disbelief that there are still those that can't go to a show without being a total wastoid. Or the group of four guys one row in front of me who did a heavy metal version of heavy petting every time Maiden started a new song. It was kind of embarrassing. One of the guys thought he was a plumber at my house because he seemed to think that me and anyone else in direct line of sight wanted to see the crack of his ass. Dude, wear some appropriate clothing to a show, not mesh shorts that fall halfway down your butt every time you move.

But for the most part, I've always had great fun striking up conversations during the intermission with my fellow metal fans. This intermission was no different. I talked to this one guy wearing an Accept Blood of the Nations T-shirt about our love of that album and the band. But the best conversation was the four people right behind me. It was a mom and dad with their two teenage daughters who had been raised on the music of Iron Maiden. The two girls, 16 and 13, weren't there posing as fans, they LOVED the music. This concert was their first concert ever. What a great way to start their concert-going careers! They saw that I had a printout of Maiden's set list and asked to look at it. The 13 year old was bummed out because they weren't going to play her favorite song. I asked which was her favorite and she responded back "22 Acacia Avenue". This floored me for two reasons. The first is that the song is more than twice as old as she is. The second reason I was floored (and laughed my butt off at) caused me to look at her dad and ask, "Does she know what that song is about?" He said no, which caused her to ask the story behind the song. Yes dear readers, the 13 year old girl's favorite Iron Maiden song is about a whorehouse.

Then the lights went down and the main event was about to start. Most people know me as a humorless pain in the butt, but take me to an Iron Maiden show and I'm a totally different guy. I spent the show screaming my head off in pure joy. The band's music and performance never fails to take me back in time to the time when I was 14 and first discovered the band and their Somewhere In Time album.

A video intro showed gigantic ice formations breaking apart and then the lights came up and the 2012 Maiden England North American tour was underway in Mansfield. The 14,000 screaming metal maniacs went hand pumping nuts as Steve Harris, Janick Gers, Adrian Smith, Dave Murray, Nicko McBrain and the Air Raid Siren himself, Bruce Dickinson, rocketed into "Moonchild"! Audio problems with the mike swallowed up the first two lines from Dickinson but it didn't matter as the band instantly lit the stage aflame with a thunderous roar.

Unlike Alice Cooper, Maiden through Dickinson thoroughly interracts with the crowd through dialogue. Dickinson welcomed the crowd to show calling the icy wasteland stage set "the world's largest martini", continually exhorted the crowd to "SCREAM FOR ME, BOSTON!" to which we all did as loud as we could every time, not even minding that we weren't actually in Boston. He exclaimed in a funny and sarcastic manner that he didn't understand why so many people had come out to see a band that didn't have their own reality show or had made their own sex tape, then said he guessed that we had all come out for the music.

The band played three songs during the show that according to the Internet reports I saw have not been played live from anywhere between 14 and 24 years. The first was "The Prisoner" (last performed 21 years ago) which was the third song of the night following "Can I Play With Madness?".

The band's show is a scintillating example of precision as they made extensive use of the video screens to introduce and enhance songs, stage props from a representation of the devil, the appearance of the band's mascot Eddie done up in old time military garb on stage, and because the Maiden England tour is representative of the original Seventh Son of a Seventh Son tour, a huge stage prop featuring another version of Eddie from that particular album. And every song brought about a new giant backdrop tied into whichever album a particular song came from.

The song "2 Minutes To Midnight" kept the frantic pace and barely contained excitement of the audience going then faded temporarily as Maiden dusted off "Afraid to Shoot Strangers" (last performed 14 years ago). Things got ramped up again with "The Trooper" which as always brought the images of muskets firing and being run through with a sword. I was decked out in T-shirt featuring the artwork for this particular song so you know I was living in the moment right about this point.

But that doesn't compare to how crazy I and a few thousand others became when the legendary spoken word intro to "The Number of the Beast" began. It's funny because despite screaming my bloody throat raw in excitment that my favorite Maiden song was starting I had the presence of mind to catch that the two girls behind me were speaking the words right along with everyone else (MAJOR POINTS, girls!) and a quick nod of remembrance for the man who recorded that intro. He passed away recently. But after that it was all crazy goodness as we learned once again that the number "666" was the one for you and me.

"Phantom of the Opera", "Run To The Hills" and "Wasted Years" left the audience gasping as the band turned things around and for the first time since 1988 performed "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son". A huge centerpiece of the set, the band killed on the song then went into "The Clairvoyant" another one of my favorite Maiden tunes.

I haven't forgotten about my concert compatriot, my brother. He was particularly happy to once again see the band perform his favorite song "Fear Of The Dark". It was made even more special because he captured it on video.

The main set came to a close with the band's namesake song, "Iron Maiden" and the band exited the stage as the crowd stomped their feet, clapped their hands and slapped the seats in exhulation to bring Maiden back for some more. I didn't join in on that little exercise since I knew they'd be back with three more songs. The airplane propeller sound and the famous bit of a Winston Churchill speech announced the beginning of "Aces High", followed by "The Evil That Men Do". The show came to an unwanted ending a few minutes later with "Running Free".

Despite some audio problems with Dickinson's mike in the early going as well as with the rest of the band (fire the sound engineer!), once again Iron Maiden turned in a mind-blowing concert experience for one and all. They continue to be a standard bearer for the heavy metal world but also show that you can still be an entertaining concert draw almost 40 years after you start your musical journey. You don't have to be a boring live band just because you aren't 25 years old anymore. If only bands of today would learn this lesson that Iron Maiden continues to teach each and every night.

Oh, and that issue with a concert T-shirt...walked back to the car after the show and got a bootleg shirt for 20 bucks.

You haven't lived a life worth living if you haven't seen an Iron Maiden concert. UP THE IRONS, INDEED!

The concert pics my brother took didn't come out very well. So I'm stealing a couple of pics from a concert review over on Loudwire. You can read their review and see the full photo gallery HERE!