Maiden Remains in Fashion in the Montreal Gazette
Nice article written after Maiden's Montreal gig. Read on !"Forget about Keith Richards - it's Iron Maiden you should place your bets on for the act most likely to keep the cockroaches company after nuclear holocaust.
The keepers of the heavy-metal torch are barely a blip on the radar of radio and video programmers, and even less than that for mallrats picking up the latest Britney and Christina product, but anyone who would dare call Maiden irrelevant wasn't at the Bell Centre last night. Few bands can pull in nearly 10,000 fans less than six months after their last appearance at the local arena."
Read the rest here
Source:Montreal Gazette
7 Comments
Britney fans, stay away
Iron Maiden's 2nd show in half a year. Three-guitarist lineup is potential for chaos, but keepers of heavy-metal torch pull it off
JORDAN ZIVITZ
The Gazette
Wednesday, January 21, 2004
Forget about Keith Richards - it's Iron Maiden you should place your bets on for the act most likely to keep the cockroaches company after nuclear holocaust.
The keepers of the heavy-metal torch are barely a blip on the radar of radio and video programmers, and even less than that for mallrats picking up the latest Britney and Christina product, but anyone who would dare call Maiden irrelevant wasn't at the Bell Centre last night. Few bands can pull in nearly 10,000 fans less than six months after their last appearance at the local arena.
Maiden have remained in fashion by ignoring everybody else's fashion. Last night's ye olde castle stage motif was the first sign of the familiar high drama most metalheads miss in the search for volume. The doomy gothic walk-on soundtrack was the second. When the band kicked into Wildest Dreams, the drama was only heightened.
Before he sang a note, Bruce Dickinson had executed his first high-kick off the stage monitors. Whatever warm-up regimen the band undertakes offstage must do the job, since there wasn't any easing into the performance. Time has taken a little of the edge off Dickinson's siren call - beloved by metalheads, dogs and aliens everywhere - but not as much as one would expect. His band mates were only a pace behind when it came to acrobatics, and everyone involved stood as testimony against the school of thought that says 40-something men should hang up the leather pants next to the guitar-hero poses.
A three-guitarist lineup carries the potential for chaos and way too many wheedly-wheedly solos for anyone's good health, but Maiden has always been about melody first, flash second. Wrathchild's funk-metal groove was near-perfect, and Can I Play with Madness was only marred by a galloping tempo.
Dickinson was as shameless a ham as a frontman can be without shredding his credibility, running across the castle walls for The Trooper and baiting the audience for applause.
The band's late arrival on stage and an early deadline necessitated a departure after just 20 minutes, roughly 11/2 hours before the evening was scheduled to wrap up with Run to the Hills. But not before Dickinson made two key statements, en français: First, he said the band knew they absolutely had to return to Montreal when making up the current itinerary - which would have carried a whiff of manure if it weren't for the 11/2-minute ovation that followed and the fact last night's show was one of only eight North American concerts in four cities.
Second, Dickinson discredited a rumour Iron Maiden's current tour is their last. Just them and the roaches.
jzivitz@thegazette.canwest.com
Cheers
nice interview whats that cockroach thing all about lol? 
nice!
It is believed that cockroaches are the only thing that would be left on earth after a nuclear holocaust.
Very good article! Keep them coming!
What a show,What a show,WHAT A SHOOOOOOOOOOOOW 