Heavy metal deities Iron Maiden tore through an epic night of mayhem and music Sunday at San Antonio’s Frost Bank Center as part of the band’s Future Past World Tour.
The colossal undertaking in support of the group’s most recent album, 2021’s Senjutsu, began in May 2023 and will include 80 dates around the world before concluding this December.
Early in the show, Maiden did a three-song run from Senjutsu, its 17th studio album. The back-to-back new tracks included “The Writing on the Wall,” “Lost in a Lost World” and “Days of Future Past.”
This bold choice set the tone for a show that wasn’t purely about delivering the hits. As Maiden frequently does, the group gave equal footing to new material.
Tracks from the 1986 classic album Somewhere in Time also featured prominently in the set. Those included “Wasted Years,” “Heaven Can Wait,” “Stranger in a Strange Land,” “Alexander the Great” and “Caught Somewhere in Time.”
Other old favorites also made appearances in the 15-song set, including “The Trooper” and “Fear of the Dark.” Even so, a number of crowd favorites were conspicuously absent, among them “Aces High,” “2 Minutes to Midnight,” “Hallowed Be Thy Name” and “Powerslave.”
Pyrotechnics added intensity to certain songs, especially toward the end of the show. Oddly, the band saved most of the fire for a new song (“Hell on Earth”), likely to create more excitement around its recent material.
Images of Eddie, Maiden’s iconic skeletal mascot, rotated behind the band on a giant screen with album art corresponding to each song. Eddie also appeared physically throughout the set as a towering mascot lumbering around the stage. Dickinson even brought out a cannon and got into a “fire fight” with Eddie during “Heaven Can Wait,” directing loud explosions at each other.
Bruce Dickinson’s distinctive vocals haven’t lost any of their luster. On Sunday, he hit soaring high notes that sounded as clear, bright and powerful as those on recordings he made decades ago. His vocals only seemed slightly strained at the very end of show. After all, it was the final U.S. date of the band’s world tour.
From here, Iron Maiden goes on to play in Mexico City, Colombia and Chile, finally concluding the tour Dec. 7 in São Paulo, Brazil.
Dickinson’s vocal strength was matched by his dynamic and magnetic stage presence. With more energy than many frontmen a third of his age, Dickinson spun and balanced the mic stand high in the air and danced across the stage with an almost elven grace.
Every member of the band was similarly energetic, delivering well-rehearsed rock ‘n’ roll moves throughout the night with the guitarists frequently clustering in the center of the stage for a song’s intro and exploding outward like locusts when it kicked off.
One might think it would harm the performance to have prescribed movements for every moment of every song. However, the performance still felt fun and spontaneous. The overall effect was impressive, demonstrating Maiden’s reputation as a well-oiled machine — one worthy of entertaining arenas packed with thousands of people.
As the crowd sweated in the growing heat of the auditorium, Dickinson dispensed long soliloquies between songs. In a preamble to “The Time Machine,” he verbally riffed on Back to the Future and its plutonium-powered DeLoreans. A diatribe before “Death of the Celts” ventured into dangerous political territory by touching on genocides throughout history, including that of Native Americans in the States. Somehow, Dickinson managed to tiptoe around saying anything particularly inflammatory. The band has a large crowd to please, after all.
Overall, Dickinson’s banter felt like the birds-eye musings of a history buff who can put distance between himself and days of future past. Just the same, the talking went on a bit too long and sometimes left the crowd a little restless. But before wearing out his welcome, the band would launch into another banger and we’d be sucked back in.
Throughout the set, Dickinson also pointed at different parts of the crowd to acknowledge even the far-reaching corners of the nosebleeds, saying “I see you up there!” Part of his magic as a frontman is his way of making each individual person in a crowd of thousands feel special — like he’s pointing right at you.
As Maiden’s unassuming anchor, Steve Harris remains the band’s backbone and primary songwriter. He delivered his trademark galloping bass lines Sunday night under the three dueling guitars of Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers.
As the band’s hour-and-a-half-long set reached its conclusion, Dickinson expressed deep gratitude that the band can still fill a stadium like it did Sunday night. “You’re our only friends,” he told the teeming crowd of thousands.
Opening for a legendary musical act like Iron Maiden is a daunting task. Diehard fans can be notoriously impatient as they wait for a headliner to take the stage, ignoring or even showing open hostility.
Fortunately, Maiden fans are a classy lot, and Mongolian folk-metal group The Hu was up to the challenge. Playing against a simple backdrop that primarily consisted of a black cloth banner bearing the its logo, the band quickly won over the crowd — thanks in large part to not aspiring to sound anything like Maiden.
Formed in 2016, The Hu has gained notoriety for combining traditional Mongolian instrumentation such as the bowed morin khuur and the bamboo flute with chugging power chords, thundering drums and chant-along vocals.
During their set, The Hu’s musicians showed that they could shred on their traditional instruments just as capably as any fleet-fingered metal guitarist. And the band’s use of traditional Mongolian throat singing served as a reminder that harsh vocals didn’t start with the ’80s onslaught of death metal bands.
The Hu came to conquer, much like legendary headliners Iron Maiden they preceded.
Sanford Nowlin contributed to this review.
