Iron Maiden - Brixton Academy - March 2002
Iron Maiden - Brixton Academy - March 2002
But there�s no acknowledgement of such facts from the stage. It�s pantomime with the most aggressive soundtrack there is.
The trouble is that irony, and things like subtexts, simply don�t exist anymore for a lot of people. In a three minute Max-Headroom Blipvert culture all we can deal with is the surface. I know this, because Bruce Dickinson knows this: �In places like Yugoslavia there is no irony, no other context. This stuff is taken deadly seriously." And on the surface all Iron Maiden offer is a sub-Hammer House Of Horror worldview.
Iron Maiden are the safest rebellion there is. The best kind of joke - one told so straight it could fool you that they�re actually serious. The scenarios in the songs are absurd, juvenile fantasies without much in the way of insight -though thankfully instead of AC/DC�s obsession with Big Balls, Tits, and Beer - Iron Maiden tend to populate their world with Articles Of War. There are Troopers, Clansmen, Wickermen, Mercenaries, Iron Maidens, Satanic Rituals, The Children Of The Damned ; the stuff of an adolescent war movie. There are leather jacketed fashion hangovers from the 80�s resplendent in baseball caps to hide the receding icecap style hairlines, and balding enormous forty somethings with their children (Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter... indeed) punching the air, raising their fists and yelling.
And the strangest thing of all, post-ironic young twenty-somethings in their just bought old-style retro Iron Maiden shirts (from a band that was on its third album before they were even born) wearing enormous bags that manage to repeatedly hit everyone around them, going on a sub-Beastie Boys so crap it's cool vote, who manage to know none of the words, appear to like none of the songs, and have incredibly bored girlfriends yawning and sending text messages all night. They probably got their �cool� T-Shirts, like all those 14 year old girls in their Motorhead Skinnyfits, from a Major High Street Chain Store and don�t even know what they sound like. Which is all well and good, but a complete waste of money.
Of course there is a fantastic amount of dumb, stupid fun to be had, wearing a uniform of denim, yelling �When the Priest comes to read me the last rites, take a look through the bars at the last sights of a world that has gone very wrong for me!�, which taps deep into the heart of any frustrated adolescent. And what is rock n roll unless it is a state of permanent adolescence?
And so, Iron Maiden retain their status as Metal Gods. Metal is the most obvious of musical genres - the lowest common denominator, reflected in uncomplicated lyrics and dealing in broad brush strokes about obvious subjects. War, which is bad. The Supernatural, which is a bit spooky. And Love, which doesn�t actually exist in their pre-teen world.
Which is not to say that it isn�t, on some level, highly enjoyable. Raise your fist and yell. But it�s a bit too simple. A bit too one-dimensional for me. Sure, Iron Maiden are a powerful military machine, and undoubtedly rock like a mother, but there just seems to be something lacking at the heart of it. And almost the entire of their work manages to avoid those messy things called emotions (all bar �Wasting Love�, which is, like much of their finer work, avoided tonight). It�s almost as if the entire content is lifted wholesale from kids' War and Horror comics.
Bruce looks distinctly ill at ease at times. Shaking his head from side to side, disappearing offstage for split-second choreographed breaks whenever one of the three superfluous guitarists takes the lead. Considering that there are only ever a rhythm and lead, it looks as if Bruce wants to be somewhere else. For whole songs it appears that at least one guitarist is doing nothing. Especially when a 20 foot Giant Monster wanders on stage, where one almost expects the whole audience to yell �Behind You!�, Janick Gers spends the whole song smacking the puppet with a guitar. It�s also predictable - the set is 95% a complete reproduction of their last UK shows some 18 months ago, even down to a Wickerman hidden behind a curtain with vestal virgins inside it and evil robot eyes.
If you want anything with complexity, subtlety or depth then Iron Maiden won�t do the trick. But if you want pomp, bombast, adolescent fantasies of war and monsters, and prehistoric rock then you�ve got the masters here. If you want one-dimensional rock (or alternately a simultaneously sincere and mocking multi-level parody of rock music) then Iron Maiden are the right men for the job. They are a British institution - Neanderthal rock music in excelsis. Which--when you realise that leather trousers, chest punching guitar solos, and 20 foot monsters with laser shooting eyes are ridiculous but look fantastic--makes Iron Maiden probably the nadir - and apex - of human culture simultaneously. I haven�t laughed so much in years.
� copyright Mark Reed, 1991-2002 except where indicated