Maiden England 2013

Check the shit out of this!

An official Iron Maiden press release from earlier today:

"More dates have been added to the Maiden England European Tour 2013. Maiden will play 5 shows in Germany - the dates are: the Festhalle Frankfurt on 11 June, the O2 World in Berlin on 18 June, O2 World in Hamburg on 19 June, Open Air Arena Singen-Aach on 29 June and Open Air an der KöPi-Arena in Oberhausen on 06 July.

Tickets go onsale October 20th with our fanclub presale starting on October 15th."

THEE CLAW says: Fuck yeah, Bruce Bruce and the boys are back in Europe!

Black Bart Blues

Maiden Come Home

From the official site:


UK Fans! We promised you’d be next and true to our word…here’s the full list of Maiden’s UK Tour dates 2011:
JULY
Wed 20 Scotland, Glasgow SECC
Thu 21 Scotland, Aberdeen AECC P&J Arena
Sat 23 England, Newcastle Metro Radio Arena
Sun 24 England, Sheffield Motorpoint Arena
Wed 27 England, Nottingham Trent FM Arena
Thu 28 England, Manchester MEN Arena
Sun 31 England, Birmingham NIA
AUGUST
Mon 1 Wales, Cardiff CIA Arena
Wed 3 Northern Ireland, Belfast Odyssey
Fri 5 England, London 02 Arena

This will be an extensive 10 city arena tour for the final run of dates on their FINAL FRONTIER WORLD TOUR 2010/11. For the first time in many years, the band will be playing shows across the full length and breadth of the UK, including places they’ve not visited for up to three decades!
Steve Harris comments; “Everything in the Maiden camp has been so full on these last five years or so that we haven't travelled around the UK to play for our home fans for almost that long.  These fans  supported us by coming to Twickenham Stadium, Reading and Leeds Festivals, Download and more recently Sonisphere so we thought we should get off our backsides and do the travelling this time and get round the country to see them all. We very much look forward to playing all four home countries and a couple of places we haven’t been for a very long time, Aberdeen and Belfast! And playing the O2 gets us as close to the East End of London where Maiden started off than we have been for many a year, probably since the Ruskin Arms! All in all l think this is going to be a very special series of shows and a wonderful way to end this whole world tour.
“We intend to take the full stadium show into the UK arenas and fit everything we possibly can into each venue. The set list will be different to this year’s tour. Of course we will play more songs from the new album and some other recent material, but we intend to include a healthy dose of older fan favourites too for those who haven’t seen us before, plus a spectacular light show and stage set, not forgetting, of  course, …Eddie!”
The UK shows will be the culmination of The Final Frontier World Tour, which began in June 2010 with a hugely successful 25 date tour throughout North America, followed by selected European stadium and festival shows, including Knebworth Sonisphere in the UK. As recently announced, early next year Ed Force One will fly the band, crew and equipment 50,000 miles around the World visiting thirteen countries before the band take a short break prior to the extensive European Tour (more announcements soon) of which the UK is the final leg.

Looks like London for us!!!

Iron Maiden Mystery...

....some noises on Twitter that there was going to be an announcement on Iron Maiden's official website this week, then today, this:

So, at six O'clock the announcement is made aaaaannnnnddddd.......

So, those tourdates in full:

FEBRUARY Fri 11 Tue 15 Thu 17 Sun 20 Wed 23 Thu 24 Sat 26 Sun 27	Moscow, RUSSIA SINGAPORE Jakarta, INDONESIA Bali, INDONESIA Melbourne, AUSTRALIA Sydney, AUSTRALIA Brisbane, AUSTRALIA Sydney, AUSTRALIA	Olympiski Singapore Indoor Stadium Stadium Utama Gelaro Bung Karno Senayan Garuda Wisnu Kencana Hisense Arena Entertainment Centre Showgrounds (Soundwave Festival) Eastern Creek Raceway (Soundwave Festival)
MARCH Fri 4 Sat 5 Mon 7 Thu 10 Sat 12 Sun 13 Thu 17 Fri 18 Sun 20 Wed 23 Sat 26 Sun 27 Wed 30	Melbourne, AUSTRALIA Adelaide, AUSTRALIA Perth, AUSTRALIA Seoul, KOREA Tokyo, JAPAN Tokyo, JAPAN Monterrey, MEXICO Mexico City, MEXICO Bogota, COLOMBIA Lima, PERU Sao Paulo, BRAZIL Rio De Janeiro, BRAZIL Brasilia, BRAZIL	Showgrounds (Soundwave Festival) Bonython Park (Soundwave Festival) Steel Blue Oval (Soundwave Festival) Chamsil Gymnasium Super Arena Super Arena Banamex Theatre Foro Sol CC Sapo Estadio San Marcos Morumbi Stadium HSBC Arena Nilson Nelson Parking Lot
APRIL Fri 1 Sun 3 Tue 5 Fri 8 Sun 10 Wed 14 Sat 16 Sun 17	Belem, BRAZIL Recife, BRAZIL Curitiba, BRAZIL Buenos Aires, ARGENTINA Santiago, CHILE San Juan, PUERTO RICO Sunrise, Florida, USA Tampa, Florida USA	Parque De Exposicoes Parque De Exposicoes Expotrade Velez Sarsfield Estadio Nacional Coliseo De Puerto Rico Bank Atlantic Center St Pete Times Forum
JULY Jun 30 - Jul 3 Fri 1 Wed 6 Fri 8 Sun 10	Roskilde, DENMARK Gothenburg, SWEDEN Oslo, NORWAY Helsinki, FINLAND St Petersburg, RUSSIA	Roskilde Festival Ullevi Stadium  Telenor Olympic Stadium SKK Peterburgskiy

With the following cryptic message tagged onto the bottom:

UK fans - don't worry, we most certainly haven't forgotten you... you're next!

Bruce Bruce, International Football Pilot

Taken from the BBC News website:

Heavy metal legend Bruce Dickinson is flying the Liverpool squad to Naples ahead of the club's Europa League clash with Italian side Napoli.

The Iron Maiden frontman, 52, who holds a commercial pilot's licence, will captain the Astraeus Airlines plane from Liverpool John Lennon Airport.

Dickinson, despite admitting he had no allegiance to any football team, said he hoped he would bring the Reds luck.

Liverpool are due to play Napoli at 1800 BST on Thursday.

"I was originally supposed to be going to Iceland and flying down to Las Palmas and Tenerife, but this looked a lot more interesting so I'm flying the team down to Naples."

Dickinson, who joined Iron Maiden in 1981, said he was lucky his day job left him time to perform.

"People ask me, which do you enjoy more and I honestly can't say, but what I can say is that I am never, ever going to give up singing.

"That's been my life and fortunately I'm in a job where I can get the time off to do it.

"In fact, the airline that I work for, Astraeus, we designed an aeroplane for an Iron Maiden tour and flew it round the world, we've done it twice now.

"It's never been done before, bands have had private jets before, but no band until Maiden has even come up with the idea of taking all the equipment, and the road crew and the band on one aircraft.

"It's like the biggest tour bus in the world."

The flight was due to leave Liverpool at 1100 BST on 20 October 2010.

THEE CLAW says: UP THE IRONS! Bruce has done this before, taking football teams to games in Europe that is - He piloted the plane that flew the Rangers team to a European game one time in 2007. (And yes, you heard us, Bruce Bruce!)

30 you say....

Happy 30th Birthday "Overkill" from Thee SKUM!!!

That so called "difficult second album" is still probably one of the best ever "difficult second albums" from any band!
1979 was a good year! Motorheads far more superior 3rd album "Bomber" is also 30 this coming october and also the mighty Venom formed thirty years ago and the even mightier Iron Maiden released their first ever recording, the now legendary Soundhouse Tapes, in 79 too!

Sunday....

...is a day of worship!!!!

Maiden Twickenham... a bit late!

British press Twickenham Stadium show reviews from Iron Maidens official site.

And the moral of this story is Thee Claw knows not what to do if a bird shits on ya!!! (bit of a dickinsonism there!)
I know my post about this gig is a bit late but this was one show where I was truly lost for (losfer!) words, a really special night.





Throughout the years from time to time I find myself getting bored of metal in general and slipping away from it but I can always count on Iron Maiden to lure me back with nights of amazement like twickenham, they did the same thing in 2000, with the album Brave New World and their Earls Court gig a couple of weeks after the albums release, metal faith, NO, MAIDEN faith was restored.
Twickenham was a right proper faith restorer I tell thee!!!!!!





The twickenham gig was my 16th Maiden show since 1990, all amazing shows obviously, sure we had a dull patch between 1995 and 1999 but I can't see Maiden EVER topping twickenham in terms of energy, showmanship and of course the setlist! And man that energy was fucking off the chart, no filler songs, it was all Go from the first song, there was even no shit songs so everybody could stop for a rest, Maiden delivered and the enormous crowd never stopped, not even for the "lifeless lump" chill out bit in Rime Of The Ancient Marinier!!!







My favourite part of the entire show was Heaven Can Wait cos they had a huuuuuge Somewhere In Time landscape on the backdrop and that was my geek out moment, that album and it's artwork blew my head off in 86 and they still impress me now and our own SJW even made an appearance on the big screen as the band came back on for the encores, sporting the mightiest grin I've ever seen haha, well in squire!!!







Bring on a new album and tour lads and also don't forget to keep Revelations and Wasted Years in the setlist for the next tour!!!!!!

Claws On Twickenham

More Twickenham goodness:

Check back right here later, we recorded a short video message for y'all while we were down in the Holy Smoke to watch thee mighty IRON MAIDEN. I'll be sure to post it up for you to see once I've double checked it for emo losers in the back of shot.

Iron Maiden @ Twickenham Stadium, July 5th 2008

What a gig!

Iron Maiden, Twickenham, 05/07/08

So on Saturday, we set off early for the long drive to London, to see Iron Maiden play at Twickenham, the home of English rugby.
Much fun had on the way down, Skum and myself started drinking pretty early (this led to us falling asleep almost as soon as we got back in the car on the way home, leaving SJW with a five hour drive on his own. Sorry lad, won't happen again) and there was much fun listening to compilation CDs of Maiden B-sides (Reach Out being surely the best song never to appear on a Maiden album), drinking more tinnys and just generally being all excited.

The reason for the excitement, for me at least, was that we knew that on this tour The Boys were playing a full greatest hits set from their "Golden Years", basically from 1982 to 1988 with a couple of other tracks thrown in, and whenever I have seen Maiden in the past they've always been touring in support of a new album and their refusal to play classics on these tours is the stuff of legend.

We met up with the Northy Clan in some pub in Hounslow, had a few pints and something to eat and then headed off to the stadium, taking in a few more pints on the way.
Twickenham truly is an impressive stadium, from the outside it looks like one of the Italian football stadiums like the San Siro, and it's got a capacity of 82 000 seats, so my guess is that full, for a concert, you could probably fit around 90 0000 people in there.
This was also the first time Maiden had played an open air stadium show in the UK.

So, it was buy some shirts (and a scarf that I insisted on wearing over my face like some scally bandit... I thought it was funny at the time), and head inside to see the end of whatever shit band were on and boo them, and then wait for Maiden to come on.
It must be one of the hardest jobs in the world to be a support band for Iron Maiden, similar I imagine to when supporting Slayer and having their name chanted all the way through your set, and having bottles lashed at you constantly.  People were actually filming the stick being handed out to the support bands on their cameras.

So...the stage is set, Doctor Doctor by UFO comes on and we wait for Maiden to take to the stage.
There's a short video showong the band travelling around the world on this tour, shots of Ed Force One and stuff, and then the voice that sends a shiver up the spine of any Maiden fan...

We shall go on to the end.
We shall fight in France
We shall fightover the seas and oceans.
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.
We shall defend our island whatever the cost may be
we shall fight on beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight on the hills.
We shall never surrender!

 ...and with a huge bang of pyrotechnics, the band run on stage going straight into Aces High. 

It was classic Maiden track after classic Maiden track, highlights for me being Revelations, Wasted Years (yes, I did go all misty eyed) and strangely, Rime of the Ancient Mariner which I had thought would bore me rigid but was actually pretty cool; the lighting rig at the top of the stage was swaying slightly during the quiet bit, and the with the sound effects of the mariner's ship creaking, it gave the effect of being on a listing ship in the ocean, albeit one with a huge stage and ninety odd thousand people on it!  Bruce running around in a cloak singing this song!
Powerslave was an unexpected surprise, a little bit more theatrics here with Bruce delivering the song in a mask, followed by a trip back to my favourite album, Somewhere in Time for Heaven Can Wait (complete with Bruce Air singalong bridge and a fucking awesome backdrop based on the album cover).
During Iron Maiden a huge mummy Eddie burst out of the back of the stage with sparks flying out of him, and a ten foot tall cyborg eddie came onstage and had a mock fight with the band.

Another nice surprise to round the night of, a one-two from Seventh Son of a Seventh Son  that I didn't expect, Moonchild and The Clairvoyant.

All in all a great day out (apart from upsetting SJW by falling asleep on the way home) but still a few too many I've-heard-this-song-every-time-I've-seen-Maiden-can-I- get-to-the-bar-and-back-before-the-next-song type moments for me.

Twickenham Setlist in Full: 
Transylvania/Churchill's Speech
Aces High
2 Minutes To Midnight
Revelations
The Trooper
Wasted Years
The Number Of The Beast
Rime Of The Ancient Mariner
Powerslave
Heaven Can Wait
Run To The Hills
Fear Of The Dark
Iron Maiden
--------
Moonchild
The Clairvoyant
Hallowed Be Thy Name

Scream for me youtube...

dhmaiden's youtube maiden page with 688 Quality Live Videos!!!
There are some excellent videos there from most eras to the current tour and a collection of awesome vids from the Porto Allegre show in Brazil this year! I'm loving the collection from 1992, the Dickinson string vest and leather jacket period!!!

Here's an example of some of the quality on there, click right here but don't click it if you don't want a bit of a set spoiler if you're going to see them, but I think it's a pretty obvious choice of tune for them to play and you should expect it!!!

Graspop Complete...

The line up for belgiums Graspop Metal Meeting 2008 is now officially complete...



Impressive!!!

Twickenham...

The full complete line up for the Iron Maiden show at Twickenham Stadium on July 5th is Maiden supported by Lauren Harris, Within Temptation, Avenged Sevenfold.
Yaaaaaaawn.
To say Thee Claw is disappointed is a huge understatement.
Maybe it's because all the good bands are busy playing european festivals that day, who knows?

Another Best of?

As you can tell, here at Claw Towers we are all a bit Iron Maiden mad.
Obsessed, you might say.
Anyway, this is just a short note to point out that there is (another) best-of release coming out.
However, seeing as the realms of best-ofs are seen as cash-in procedures and probably left to pop musicians, the band have seen fit to issue a statement on their website (through manager Rod Smallwood) to their fans:

"As you guys will have read from our press release, 'the best of' is to help introduce new friends into the world of Maiden. We are not trying to sell this to the legions of our well valued Maiden supporters who probably already have these 'tracks' (and no doubt the entire collection of albums!).

From the amount of tickets sold there are a lot of people coming to our shows this year who won't have seen us before, so this is intended for them as an introduction, similar to previous ones of this nature. As with 'Edward the Great' we will arrange for the front and back cd artwork to be available for you to print free nearer the release date so, if you want, you can have them for your collections."

Of particular not regarding this release, the cover has been created by none other than Derek Riggs, the man responsible for Iron Maiden maiden artwork up to Brave New World, and the inspiration for millions of teenaged metalheads (myself included) to draw decomposing corpses all over their school books.
For me, this is as big news as the fact that Iron Maiden are playing "Wasted Years" on this tour.

Oh, and this "Best of" is coming out on picture disc vinyl.
Sick.

Iron Maiden In Tokyo - Bruce's Kebab Comment

Here's a little update between gigs for y'all, about Iron Maiden. Well, why not??

I didn't know about the following youtube clip until Thee H sent me this YouTube link:



Check out the clip (if you are so inclined) and at the 3 minute mark Bruce Dickinson says "Oi you at the back there, with the donner kebab! Pay attention!". When he said this I was stood way at the back of the room, by the kebab stall, with a kebab in my hand.



He said that and I thought "haha Bruce has got good eye-sight!" and then I took a few photos for some reason.

Here's a few more photos that I took during that day in Chiba at the Makuhara Messe convention centre. It was a great gig and a great day out too. Can't wait for Twickenham.










The second-to-last pic is of a cooler-than-cool Jap metaller who I spotted in the crowd, he wearing a Maiden flag as a cape and also a pair of Freddie Mercury style spandex pants. You don't get many of them at gigs here in England, I wonder why! The last of the photos here is of the Japanese Maiden fans all leaving the hall (Manowar style), in a very orderly fashion.

Iron Maiden Setlist Spoiler

SJW sent me this photo earlier today from Tokyo; as maiden were playing in Makuhari Messe he wrote the setlist down on his claw to send home, how awesome is that.
I know that with this being a show containing a lot of Maiden favourites, some people will be avoiding the setlist, so click here if you want to see it.

Iron Maiden @ Makuhari Messe, Tokyo

The Maiden gig in Tokyo today was really good. It was filled to the brim with Japanese metallers of all kinds, but also there were lots of non-metal fans there too. They really go wild at concerts!

One thing I noticed is that, when Maiden played the song "2 Minutes To Midnight", everyone in the crowd made the peace-sign when they shouted along with the chorus.


I guess they meant *2* minutes to midnight, but its really weird how they all did it in unison here but I have never seen or heard of it being done anywhere else. Perhaps it actually is done everywhere, but I have been to drunk or too busy headbanging to ever notice it before.

That's it - no more gigs here in Japan for now.

Iron Maiden @ Yokohama

Ok, so here's an interesting one - Iron Maiden in Japan.

I'm not going to go on and on about this, but I do have to write it all down now while it is in my head, because I'll be at another gig tomorrow and if I don't do this now it will all blend into one big memory.

The gig was held in a place called the Pacifico Yokohama which is a big conference hall centre by the riverfront. The hall where Maiden played was all-seater. There's a carnival ground nearby and lots of skyscrapers. We got there early (I like to be sure that I know where the venue is) then we went around the way and found the Yokohama Hard Rock Cafe to get some food and listen to metal.

The ticket for the concert is in Japanese, so I couldn't read many of the details of it. All that I could make out is my seat number (B-41-38) and that the doors were due to open at 6pm. We got there pretty handy, at about 5pm, just in case. Then at half past 5 (on the dot) some guys who were from venue security appeared from inside the Pacifico wearing long blue bubble-jackets and with megaphones in hand. They were shouting something in Japanese and pointing around the corner and down some stairs, we figured that they were there to tell everyone to start making their way to a different entrance.

Well, as soon as the guys with the megaphones said whatever they said, all of the Japanese metallers began running along to form a queue. There were 100s of them sprinting! So we thought "better get moving" and walked quickly in the direction that everyone else was moving. At the foot of a huge staircase and around the corner there was more security, they specified for a queue to be formed and it needed to be exactly 4 people wide - no more, no less. And surprisingly, that's exactly how it formed.

At 6pm (again, on the dot) they opened the doors to the venue and the queue began to file inside in a very sensible fashion. We went through security and then another queue began to form, this time for the merch tables. I have never seen such organisation from your average metaller! I got into the queue pretty sharpish (I only had to wait about 5 minutes). The tshirts were ridiculously pricey - the equivalent of £25 for a shirt. WhhaaaaaaAAA?? And there were no Japan-only shirts, they have tour dates on them for the first leg of the current tour (from the India gig on February 1st to a gig in Toronto on March 16th). I picked up 2 shirts - 1 for me (a Somewhere In Time one) and one for my brother who now owes me £25 and a night on the ale. They also had a great looking blue Maiden scarf on sale, but I never got one and forgot to check out the price for it. Maybe I'll see them again tomorrow night.

Right, enough about all that. Time for some gig review.

Support act: The Lauren Harris Band

The gig started at about 18:30 with Lauren Harris and her band. I am not a fan of hers at all. They played a set of about 6 or 7 songs that lasted roughly 35 minutes, which included a cover of Gun's "Steal Your Fire". Apart from the one song I cannot remember any of the other track names, they all seemed to blend into one long Kerrang-friendly pop metal set. Not promising for the rest of this tour, as Lauren Harris and her band are being hyped up when (let's be honest) they're only were they are because of her dad being in Maiden. Oh dear.

I remember looking around the hall during the interval before Maiden and I noticed that there was a high percentage of women in the crowd. There were a lot of Japanese businessmen dressed in suits too... I had one sat right behind me, in fact. Maybe they arrived straight from work. The row of seats were I was sat was all Westerers too, strange that. You should have seen the dress sense of some of the people in there though. A lot of the Japs were wearing full leather get ups with black bandanas and maiden tshirts under their jackets. Some Westerners looked like their mum had dressed them. the guy next to me, for example, had jeans and a Maiden tshirt on.. and a beige cardigan tied around his waist.

Before the show began event staff were patrolling up and down the aisles between the rows with placards showing diagrams of cameras in red circles and a red line through them - NO PHOTOGRAPHY. Hmm, ok. I could see that this had the potential to get messy.

The lights went back down at 19:30 and Doctor Doctor started to play. Soon after Maiden took to the stage and they did a great set.

I want to write a set list out but I won't spoil it for you! Although I could (being a sad fucker I kept notes of what got played). If you want to know what they played, I have the list here. What do you reckon, should I edit this and add the setlist to the end? It was a fucking blinding set like. But one thing that was very strange is that the whole event was over and done with by 9:30pm. In England most bands don't even get on stage til about then!

During one song half way through the night Bruce Dickinson came on stage wearing a cape and mask and I just *had* to get a photo:


As soon as I took it one of the little event security guys, dressed in a full suit, ran at me and demanded that I stop taking photos immediately or he would throw me out. I mean, he proper ran to me, past all of the other people in my row! I said "Many apologies" and I was very nice to him. I mean, what else was I going to say? Anyway I made it to the end of the night and what's more I even made a 4 minute video haha.

We're due to go to see them again tomorrow, I dunno if I will be writing such a big review then though because tonight we never had any alcohol, but tomorrow I am getting drunk.

Iron Maiden @ Twickenham

...are being supported by Avenged Sevenfold. Very, very disappointing.

What is going on with the Maiden support act slot? A couple of years ago they had Trivium opening for them. Last year, Lauren Harris.... and now this? I understand that these bands have some kind of appeal to their fanbase, but why must Maiden have nu-metal acts with them on every tour? Whoever is booking their gigs needs to be taken to one side and given a stern lecture about how to keep Thee Claw happy.

We want Priest!