No surprises. Iron Maiden presented this Tuesday at the Palau Sant Jordi the tour The future past world tour. A colorful setting, two Eddies –his pet monster– and the already classic musicians, the voice and the motor of Bruce Dickinson, the command of Steve Harris on bass, the guitars of Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers and the great Nicko McBrain on drums.
The tour had to be the presentation of Senjutsu -from 2021-, but since the covid amended their plans, they already showed it a year ago at the Estadi Olímpic, and now they mix it in equal parts with the mythical album Somewhere in time, from 1986 , five songs each, plus other past hits from the eighties but without some of the classics, it doesn’t even make anything essential.
The atmosphere heats up – in addition to the heat wave, of course, intense – with the introduction through the speakers of the Doctor, doctor of Ufo, followed by the final theme of Blade runner by Vangelis, and the ovation and the heavy horns explode when it begins to sound Caught somewhere in time, a theme that has not been on any tour since 1987. After the twin guitars intro, with the stage empty and dark, the band starts at the edge of the stage at full volume and a set on screens flanked by mutant iterations of Eddie and the image of a colorful street as if everything were neon from a Japanese dystopia. Throughout the concert, various screens will change the scene, now landscapes now references to time travel, or various versions of Eddie coming to life as the songs go by, including the fusion of the 1986 with the 2021 samurai. The future past? The future past? A present that does not horrify and does entertain. Between statism and fierce dynamics. Trapped somewhere in time, they have been singing for almost half a century as a band.
Immediately afterwards, another look at the past with Stranger in a strange land, in a land that is not strange to them. Harris walks around on bass, like Smith and Murray between riffs, accompaniments and solos, Gers plays posing and skipping and Dickinson moves the audience as he goes up and down the stage. The bounty hunter version of Eddie appears in a corner just for us to see and walks away, while everything remains the same.
“Hello Barcelona, ??hello Spain and hello Catalunya!” Dickinson shouts and celebrates that they have sold out. He introduces with an ecological simile the first of three Senjutsu themes, The writing on the wall. The public celebrates the newest songs as if they were from a lifetime, as with Days of future past and The time machine.
Like in a time machine, the fans maintain the uncertain epic of this threatening future and the group weaves together one of the great classics of all times, The prisoner, which reminds us that we are not numbers but people, we are free men, and not prisoners.
They return to the present with Death of the Celts, another of Harris’ songs about the annihilation of cultures, and Dickinson recalls that “if you have a language, a culture, a tradition, a family, they can’t annihilate you. It sounds like Catalonia, but this is not a song about the death of the Catalans, but of the Celts”.
Can I play with madness, his almost mainstream hit from 1988, opens the final stretch. It will not be until the end of Heaven Can Wait, after concert time, that Eddie returns as a bounty hunter and duels with Dickinson during the guitar solos. Eddie squeezes him so tight that the singer misses a few bars.
Then, an impressive Alexander the Great that fans have been able to hear live for the first time, before one of his stadium anthems, Fear of the dark, everyone singing, and the classic from the first album, the eponymous Iron Maiden, with Samurai Eddie playing wrestling with the musicians.
Already in the encores, the last song from the last album, Hell on Earth, with flames on the stage, followed by another classic like The trooper, this time without Dickinson waving the flag and without losing the magic, to end with Wasted years, with Smith’s iconic riff and a message that may seem contradictory: “Don’t waste time looking for the lost years (…) realize that you live the golden years.” It is evident that you can live in the present without giving up a glorious past, and Iron Maiden has been demonstrating it for decades by riding on stage.
Catalan version, here
