Iron Maiden is out on the road on their Future Past tour, but they’re celebrating their present just as much as they’re honoring the past or looking to the future.
The British heavy metal band, who will be celebrating a 50th anniversary next year, appeared as relevant as ever in a show Friday night that packed PPG Paints Arena in Pittsburgh — their first visit here since 2019.
Sure, there was plenty of looking back on their legacy, especially when it came to their “Somewhere in Time” album from 1986, with five songs played from that record.
“It was a long (expletive) time ago. It was a time, I mean, even the dinosaurs were not extinct when we made that (expletive) record,” singer Bruce Dickinson joked with the crowd. “And I can see a few of them are still in the audience right now. And we got people who were not even born when we made ‘Somewhere in Time.’”
The multiple generations of fans — with a healthy representation of vintage shirts — also saw Iron Maiden showcase their latest release —2021’s “Senjutsu” — for five songs, too, including “Hell on Earth” to open the encore. Playing too many “new” songs can be akin to walking a tightrope, so they made sure to open the show with a pair of “Somewhere in Time” songs before switching to three of their newer songs: “The Writing on the Wall,” “Days of Future Past” and “The Time Machine.”
The progressive metal band, which features Dickinson, bassist Steve Harris, drummer Nicko McBrain and a trio of guitarists: Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers, showed few signs of slowing down physically. At 66, Dickinson is the youngest in the group, but he sang strongly all night, holding an extended note of around 20 seconds to cap “Alexander the Great.” Gers seemed the most animated, whether it was performing dizzying circles, windmilling on his guitar or stretching his leg upwards to rest it on an amp.
Before “Death of the Celts,” Dickinson took a minute to chastise three “(expletive) idiots” near the front and threatened to have them tossed from the show.
“This is a Maiden show,” Dickinson said. “You do not (expletive) around and push and punch people and (expletive) with people, all right?”
The show featured Iron Maiden’s trademark soaring melodic metal, complete with songs referencing history (“Alexander the Great” and “The Trooper”), pop culture (“The Prisoner” based on the TV show of the same name) and religion (“Heaven Can Wait”), as well as a galloping rhythm section and a multitude of solos from all three guitarists.
With a catalog spanning almost five decades, it proved impossible to play all of their top songs with notable omissions like “Run to the Hills,” “2 Minutes to Midnight,” “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” and “Powerslave.” (In a possibly related note, McBrain suffered a stroke in January 2023, and the band later dropped some songs that he had difficulties performing.)
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And would an Iron Maiden concert be complete without appearances from Eddie, the band’s mascot and frequent subject of their album cover art? A larger-than-life version hit the stage as a gunslinger during “Stranger in a Strange Land” and a samurai during “Iron Maiden,” while also taking part in a gun fight with Dickinson, complete with pyro, during “Heaven Can Wait.” An even wider variety of Eddies starred in the backdrop designs, which changed to set the mood from song to song.
After starting their encore with “Hell on Earth,” which built slowly before exploding (musically and with shooting flames), Iron Maiden gave the crowd what it had been waiting for: a rollicking version of “The Trooper,” which even spurred a solitary crowd surfer, followed by “Wasted Years.”
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The Hu — a Mongolian folk metal band that uses instruments like a morin khurr (a horsehead fiddle), tumur hhuur (jaw harp) and tovshuur (two- or three-stringed lute) — were an interesting choice to open the show.
Pronounced just like The Who, the surprisingly heavy band incorporated throat singing and driving double percussion, with some songs evoking the vibe of Metallica’s “Harvester of Sorrow” and Black Sabbath’s “Fairies Wear Boots.” Despite the lyrics being in Mongolian, metal proved to be the universal language for an appreciative crowd.