Photo Courtesy: Matt Pearce
By Matt Pearce
British heavy metal legends Iron Maiden made a stop in Dallas on Friday night on “The Book of Souls” tour at the American Airlines Center in Dallas, Texas. Opening for Iron Maiden was Sweden’s satanic-lyric heavy pop-rock Ghost. Being the opening act, lights and lasers were at a minimal, just the band’s make-up, costumes and catchy music was appreciated by the heavy-metal crowd. The band members use a strict vow of anonymity on the record and on-stage. They obscure their faces with cowls and skull-face paint with lead singer Papa Emeritus III wearing robes and jewelry looking very anti-Pope. The band kicked off their set with the very popular Square Hammer pulling the crowd immediately into their alluring melodic and rhythmic sounds. A total of 45 minutes for the band which included Ritual, From the Pinnacle to the Pit and the always popular Cirice.
Next Iron Maiden entered the stage with a multitude of lights, larges pieces of stones made to look like Mayan Ruins with two large video screens next to the stage enabling lead singer Bruce Dickinson to leap back and forth between the stones and artifacts during the set. A majority of the material came off of their new album “The Book of Souls”. Right off the bat from that album, the band opened with If Eternity Should Fail followed by Speed of Light and then Wrathchild from the “Killers” album. The show started off high energy but quickly subdued until The Trooper from the album “Piece of Mind” bringing the crowd back to head-banging life. From that point on the music seemed to blend into one another until the encore of the scorching and extremely popular Number of the Beast with the anti-christian, demonic symbols and imagery populating the stage. Fear of the Dark was next with the crowd head-banging and throwing up the devil horns and singing every word. Wasted Years ended the show from the “Somewhere in Time” album. As the song ended, and the band said something about going to go drink some “Texas beer” while many fans were still looking for and wondering if the band was going to play some of the older and classic Iron Maiden songs. Where was Hallow be thy Name, 2 Minutes to Midnight and the essential signature-song Run to the Hills? Looks like the only running to the hills was where the Texas beer was being served.
