10 September 2024 – Brisbane Entertainment Centre – words by Lucas Bell – pictures by Bec Harbour
After a planned and failed 2020 tour, British heavy metal icons Iron Maiden made their long awaited return to Australia, bringing along another iconic band, and the undisputed kings of metalcore, Killswitch Engage. Both bands haven’t been to Australia since 2018, so the team up of these two bands has been long overdue. I love both of these bands so much, so there was a high bar here for the night. And that bar was easily met almost immediately.
Walking on stage to the intro of ‘My Curse’, Boston legends Killswitch Engage soaked in the reception from the Brisbane crowd, which I was actually surprised at how loud the audience was. I’m a long time KSE fan, but I didn’t expect a packed out Maiden crowd to be so into them. After ‘My Curse’ though, they hit a deep cut I never thought I would see live, with ‘This Fire’. This song used to be the WWE theme song for CM Punk, and myself and Cody from Live Wire lost our minds singing along as the resident wrestling nerds. Jesse had a lot of fun with the crowd throughout the show, talking about being drunk bastards from Boston, dropping the C word a lot, and talking about his gray hairs and sagging balls, as they delved into a storied set that has to be some of my favourite live performances of the year, closing the show out with ‘The End of Heartache’, ‘My Last Serenade’, and their cover of ‘Holy Diver’, which sent the entire Brisbane Entertainment Centre into a frenzy.
After teasing walking out to ‘Doctor Doctor’ by UFO, and the Blade Runner End Titles, Iron Maiden made their way on stage with a bang (literally), opening with ‘Caught Somewhere in Time’. This is the third time I’ve seen Iron Maiden, and I said in 2008 what I said again last night. How the hell do these guys move around the way they do, in their mid to late 60s they way they do, but I need to take a breath just to get out of bed some days. The energy in this band is so electrifying. After Bruce spoke about the wildest subjects known to man, including how Quokka’s are superior to Koalas because Quokkas won’t give you chlamydia, to the 2011 Brisbane floods and the sharks that infested the shopping malls the tides were so high, all the way to calling the distance between Perth and the East Coast the GAFA (Great Australian Fuck All), we jumped back into the tunes, with ‘The Writing on the Wall’.
Iron Maiden – BEC – photos by Bec Harbour
I’ve been convinced for years that Bruce Dickinson is the most charismatic frontman in all of music. And Bruce flew that charm flag high tonight, talking to the crowd again about more random local things that international bands don’t pay attention to. He spoke about the planned 2020 gig being canceled due to the “Covid Bug”, before confusing the “Covid Bug” with Moreton Bay Bugs, which is just nuts, and something about doing lines, which I can only assume was a joke about everyone being on cocaine during lockdowns. He even made a joke about Woolworths and the resurrection of the Wooly Mammoth, and we can buy our mammoth steaks at Woolies. The man’s brain is so unhinged in the best way. As the band went to start up ‘Time Machine’, there appeared to be a disturbance in the crowd, which forced Maiden to reset and restart the song.
Iron Maiden – BEC – photos by Bec Harbour
From here out, it was all just tune and after tune. ‘The Prisoner’ drew a massive pop from the crowd, which surprised me. ‘The Prisoner’ is the song that got me into Iron Maiden, and I’ve never seen it live. So this part of the show was super special for me. After an impassioned speech about culture and border conflicts, we got new song ‘Death of the Celts’, before a huge run of tracks, including ‘Can I Play With Madness’, ‘Heaven Can Wait’, and ‘Alexander the Great’. Something I haven’t mentioned yet, is that during ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’, we got our first sight of Eddie on stage, who made three appearances throughout the show. The second appearance was during ‘Heaven Can Wait’, where Eddie engaged in a gun fight with Bruce, with Bruce using something similar to a rocket launcher on stage to shoot and take out Eddie. It’s these production elements that made Iron Maiden shows unforgettable.
Iron Maiden – BEC – photos by Bec Harbour
After some silence, the intro to ‘Fear of the Dark’ kicked in, as the entire crowd sang the guitar melody. It was so awesome. And the final song of the main set, was the song ‘Iron Maiden’, with Eddie returning once again in Samurai armor and holding a sword, as a giant inflatable Eddie head appeared behind drummer Nikko. The three song encore kicked off, with ‘Hell on Earth’ first up. Another thing I haven’t mentioned is that behind the set, there was a rotating backdrop set up, which would change for every song. So there is no surprise that in an almost pitch black room, we saw the backdrop of Trooper Eddie, which absolutely lit up the Brisbane crowd. The show closed on my favourite Maiden song, in ‘Wasted Years’. I never envisioned this song as a closer, until I saw it live. This should be the standard closer moving forward. There is something so epic about this song ending the night.
Iron Maiden – BEC – photos by Bec Harbour
Seeing Iron Maiden in 2008 on the Somewhere Back in Time tour, I’ve said ever since then that that show is the single best concert I’ve ever been to. But 2024 Iron Maiden, bolstered with an incredible support in Killswitch Engage, has superseded that show in every way, which I did not think possible. The crowd was white hot. The bands were at the top of their game. And every moment of the night was perfect.
