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My problem with Iron Maiden

January 2nd, 2009 by goatlady
Obituary at Jaxx

Image by Metal Chris via Flickr

I men­tioned way back that I was going to write a lit­tle bit about my prob­lem with Iron Maiden head­lin­ing Wacken 2008. I guess that time has finally arrived.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I recog­nise that Iron Maiden are one of metal’s pio­neers, yada yada yada. But they just don’t really do it for me. My post Judas Priest vs Iron Maiden: Choose Your Side, posted Jan­u­ary 2008 – that is, nearly 12 months ago – is the most pop­u­lar and most com­mented post on my enter the goat­lady blog, so it’s def­i­nitely a hot but­ton topic amongst fans of clas­sic metal.

My issue boils down to this: Iron Maiden toured around the world in 2008 under the “Some­where Back In Time” ban­ner play­ing only songs from their “clas­sic” 80’s albums. At a time when metal is under­go­ing a mas­sive resur­gence, when more new music is being released every week than ever before, when there are so many great bands out there in every sub-genre of metal that are cur­rent and pop­u­lar and great, it just seems back­wards that the main head­lin­ing act of the world’s largest and most respected heavy metal fes­ti­val is a bunch of dinosaurs who are only play­ing music from 20 years ago. Met­al­Sucks’ “Vince Neil­stein” refers to those kinds of bands as legacy acts and while I believe there is def­i­nitely a place for these kinds of bands, the head­lin­ing spot of Wacken is not that place.

Com­pare that with Obit­u­ary, who were my high­light act of the fes­ti­val. Obit­u­ary have a 25 year his­tory and are one of the vet­er­ans of the Florida death metal scene. They reformed after a 5 year hia­tus in 2003 and have released two albums and an EP in that time. Their Wacken set fea­tured mate­r­ial from through­out their career with a quite heavy empha­sis on their lat­est album. The crowd seemed to know much of the new mate­r­ial, responded really well to it, and while 1989’s Slowly We Rot will always be a high­light of the set, here’s a clas­sic band releas­ing new mate­r­ial that is cur­rent and rel­e­vant and dare I say it, fuck­ing awe­some and their fan base recog­nises that.

So let’s have a fresh, cur­rent and rel­e­vant lineup for 2009. It’s look­ing pretty good so far (and is sold out already!).

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 3:55 pm and is filed under woa2009. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

2 Responses to “My problem with Iron Maiden”

  1. Saqib says:
    January 3, 2009 at 5:34 pm

    The worst and most far from the truth thing that can be said about Iron Maiden is that they are try­ing to live on their past glory. Maiden toured sup­port­ing their lat­est album before embark­ing on the Some­where Back in Time Tour. I think your prob­lem with Maiden is that you don’t really like Maiden.

  2. Wulfe says:
    February 18, 2009 at 7:21 am

    Sure peo­ple want to lis­ten to 80′ clas­sics. Thats Metal’s dif­fer­ence from pop — in pop only new “hits” count. Brit­ney Seaprs’ “fans” will lis­ten to her new album over and over, but her first cd’s will be thrown some­where deep inside their clos­ets.
    In Metal (or qual­ity music) — the songs are time­less. When hear­ing a great com­po­si­tion, you dont care when it was writ­ten or how many times you’ve heard it before, you’ll love to hear it again and again(especially live). Add to that the “nos­tal­gia” fac­tor — and you’ve got your ulti­mate rea­son for bands play­ing old songs (and some­times old songs only), and for fans being statisfied.

    So there will always be some­one dis­s­a­pointed. Maybe you want bands to play new stuff (my bet is that its an eas­ier excuse for being “against” maiden when in truth — you just dont like their music), but when Maiden’s last album came out — they embarked on a tour which setlist was con­cluded of the entire new album’s track­list. No 80′, no 90′, no early 2000′, only new album. So as good as the new album is(and it is), many fans where dis­s­a­pointed. Why? Obvi­ously, they want clas­sics! Every fan of maiden (or even some­one who likes the band to some extent) would like to hear more clas­sics and more famil­iar songs.
    Just as you’ve said — Sowly we Rot (or Cause of Death, or Chopped in Half) will always be fans favourite, no mat­ter how good “Evil Ways” is.

    P.S
    Obit­u­ary was formed 21 years ago, not 25. And when I’ve seen live last year, they didnt play “Cause of Death” (song, not album) or any­thing from “End Com­plete” and “World Demise”. Imag­ine how I and many oth­ers were pissed.
    So some­times, a band ignor­ing it’s early years is not a good idea at all.