Concert review - Somewhere Back In Time Tour

I never would have thought that I'd get the opportunity to see Iron Maiden playing their classic material live in Trondheim, but the opportunity arose nonetheless. Although it must be admitted that this did not properly dawn on me until yesterday morning - the day of the concert. As we drove towards Lerkendal with "Somewhere In Time" blaring from the car stereo, I really started anticipating this event. We came quite early to the venue, seeing as how we'd heard on the radio that 22000 tickets had been sold, and that people were lines up in front of the entrances already the morning of the event. Consequently, we didn't run into too much of a queue holdup on our way in, and we could buy our merch relatively hassle-free.

As a sidebar, it must be admitted that metal concerts draw the weirdest people out of the woodworks interspersed with normal looking people. You've got your basic 80's time warp crowd - typically middle-aged guys who really pride themselves in emulating the wardrobe and hair style of either Axl Rose, Sebastian Bach or Bret Michaels ca. 1989. Then there's the black metal and emo crowd, with their black getups, piercings and anemic shuffling. A heavy metal happening of this magnitude of course means that every roided-out biker within a 300 km radius shows up in a ragged denim or leather vest, carrying invisible suitcases. There were bikers there who at least approaching my size, and I'm thinkin' that if you had a hankering for some decent D-bol, Deca, Equipiose, Winny or Test, Lerkendal would've been your one-stop local mexican pharmacy, at least on July 22nd 2008. And then, there were loads and loads of rednecks, hillbillys and straight-up inbred white trash. I remember my friend Eric used to wax philosophically about the proper nomenclature for plurals of various species back during my tenure at NCSU. There's a flock of seagulls, a pack of wolves, a murder of crows, but what do you call a large gathering of rednecks? According to Eric, the correct nomenclature is a truckload of rednecks. For even large gatherings - a convoy of rednecks. Yesterday, there sure was a convoy of rednecks at Lerkendal. Also, as my wife remarked, in Trondheim there is no age limit on getting totally wasted in public. Guys (or girls) in their 50's appear to have no inhibitions towards getting totally wasted and behaving accordingly in public. You don't see that in Bergen or Oslo. Oh well.

Since we got there relatively early, we got to see all the acts, so here's a complete review:

Lauren Harris
I had absolutely no expectations for this act, which revolves around Iron maiden bass player and general boss Steve Harris' daughter. As a matter of fact, I was pretty sure that the billing of Lauren Harris was singularly due to her lineage, and dismissed the act as such. Big mistake on my part - the songs were good, the band rocked (including some behind-the-neck solo work from the guitar player), and Lauren Harris (as well as the guitarist) possessed that elusive rock star quality. Cool act.

Avenged Sevenfold
In short - they sucked. The guitars were out of tune, and the two guitarists were out of sync. Green Day meets Morbid Angel and trips over Limp Bizkit on their way to the men's room. Awful. When you have two guitar players doing the twin guitar Iron Maiden/Thin Lizzy harmonies, it would be of tremendous help if the guitars were tuned and if the guitarists had the technical skills to play the lines in sync. No such luck with A7F, despite the claims of lead guitarist Synyster Gates being a virtuoso and a master of sweep picking. Yeah right - the only competent band member was the drummer. Bunch of emo losers.

Iron Maiden
FINALLY it was time for Maiden, and after a brief video collage of the band on Bruce Airlines, Flight 666, the Churchill soundtrack started up, which segued into one of the greatest opening songs of all time - "Aces High". Sadly, "Aces High" was plagued by sound problems, and Bruce Dickinson's voice faded at times, and there was no sound on Adrian Smith's guitar for the majority of his first solo, which kind of bummed me out, but once the sound was more or less where it ought to be, everything just gelled. Iron Maiden sounds like it's one single instrument (as my wife has remarked on several occasions) - everything is in sync and in time. Case in point; during "The Trooper", Adrian Smith and Janick Gers played the same solo simultaneously (Adrian Smith's original solo), and if not for the slightly fatter sound, it wouldn't have been possible to know that there were two guitars playing. VERY impressive. Smith also played his white Charvel, while Gers and Murray played modified Fender strats, in case you were interested. Bruce Dickinson was on fire, and his voice held up really well - impressive considering the complexity of the vocal lines and his age - Steve Harris was running all over the place or aiming his Fender P bass at the audience, and Nicko McBrain was his excellent, metronome self. Plenty of pyro, and I got to hear damn near all of my favorite Maiden songs. They even played "The Clairvoyant" from "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son" towards the end. Freakin' awesome! Plenty of pyro and smoke, plus the mandatory visit from two incarnations of Eddie.

The set list and a review from the local rag can be found here.