IRON MAIDEN LIVE IN SYDNEY

ACER ARENA, February 9, 2008

Iron Maiden's first Australian tour since 1992 was perhaps one of the most anticipated events for a large part of the local metal community since it was announced in September. 14,000 tickets for the first Sydney show had sold out within five minutes of the official release date and it looked like at least half of those people were crowded in to the Homebush Bay Brewery before the gig, singing along to any song that was even remotely heavy metal.

Inside Acer Arena, Steve Harris' little girl Lauren was opening the show. I'm not sure if many people saw her set as I can't find anyone who did; I certainly didn't catch it.

Of all the bands that could have followed, apparently Iron Maiden chose Behind Crimson Eyes. In other countries, where Maiden has gone out with acts like Funeral for a Friend, this may have worked. But Australian metal audiences are ridiculously parochial, and BCE quickly learned that an Iron Maiden show was no place for them to be. Despite the fact that they are awful, Behind Crimson Eyes gained a modicum of respect from me just for trying. As a totally inappropriate choice of opening band, to their credit they tried to make it work - sometimes way too desperately - and their cover of "Ace of Spades" was diabolical. They received possibly the worst reception from any crowd I've ever seen but somehow they battled through it. It was major level ownage, but maybe Behind Crimson Eyes will take something away from it. No longer calling themselves a metal band might be a good place to start.

After that the anticipation was simply incredible, and when the stage lights went down to the tune of UFO's "Doctor Doctor" there was an enormous roar that almost drowned out the intro. Then with a blast of flame and a high-kicking leap from Bruce Dickinson, Iron Maiden was on stage, ripping into "Aces High" and for the next two hours the capacity crowd at Acer Arena was treated to one of the most dynamic live bands in the world. In front of their gigantic movable backdrop and classic ancient Egypt set, Iron Maiden played through their best known songs and the whole room sang along.

On stage, Iron Maiden is amazing, a spectacular, well-oiled machine. Even without all the trappings they would be an incredible band to watch. Liveliest of all is Bruce Dickinson, who is never still for a moment and the focus of the band's entire show. While the others criss cross the stage and Janick Gers carries on with his wild acrobatics, Dickinson is singing, running, leaping, flag-waving and even changing costumes throughout. The set list was a non-stop parade of classics, faintly echoing the running order of Live After Death, the DVD of which has just been released (and shot to No.1 according to Dickinson) but with a few others thrown in to the mix. This is of course meant that the sublime "Revelations" got an airing, one of my favourite songs of all and done brilliantly. The immense "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" was also rolled out once again, at long last. It was one of the highlights of the World Slavery Tour and it was again tonight, with a massive backdrop of a rotting ship looming above the band and smoke filling the arena. Before it began however, one of those transcendental concert moments happened: as the band paused for Dickinson to do his introduction, the entire crowd began to spontaneously chant, clap and stomp, completely unbidden. For a long moment, it seemed even the mighty Iron Maiden was overawed and Dickinson, for once, was completely speechless. It's rare when something the crowd does can be the high moment of a show, but this was one of those times.

"Heaven Can Wait" was another high point when a huge group of competition winners got to join the band on stage, and it was great to hear "Wasted Years" get a run too, along with "Moonchild" that opened the encore.

If there was one criticism, it lies with the mix, which was remarkably uneven throughout the show, but most noticably during "Powerslave" where the guitars were incredibly muddy and virtially non-existent for much of the first verse. My only other beef was with Eddie, whose cameo during "Iron Maiden" seemed terribly lame. That could be just a minor nit-pick however, because otherwise the whole performance was pretty much flawless. The band looked like they were truly enjoying themselves, and it would have been hard not to have been revved by Acer's vast crowd tonight, who were clearly relishing every moment.

Bruce said at least twice that Iron Maiden will return to Australia again soon, and after the reception they got tonight it would be hard to argue against it. They may have left it a long time to come back, but they tonight they almost made it worthwhile.

Full set:

• Transylvania (recorded intro)
• Churchill's speech/Aces High
• 2 Minutes to Midnight
• Revelations
• The Trooper
• Wasted Years
• Can I Play With Madness?
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Powerslave
• The Number of the Beast
• Heaven Can Wait
• Run to the Hills
• Fear of the Dark
• Iron Maiden
• Moonchld
• The Clairvoyant
• Hallowed be Thy Name

diSEMBOWELMENT: Transcendence Into the Peripheral

Produced by diSEMBOWELMENT

Released: 1993

Back in the days before My Dying Bride and Anathema even existed, there was a two-piece grind band in Melbourne called Bacteria that decided after a little while to combine what they were doing with some things that were completely different. As a result of this, one of metal's most truly amazing bands came to be.Perhaps more than any other band, diSEMBOWELMENT is the true embodiment of crushing, soul-scarring doom. Their combination of epic, glacially-paced riffs, fuzzy, post-rock sonic architecture, mournful, tortured vocal atmospherics and blast beat violence was a truly unique recipe that has since been mirrored and echoed across the metal sphere but rarely as impressively or as compulsively.

Transcendence Into the Peripheral is diSEMBOWELMENT's only full-length release, a culmination of their experimental technique that remains untarnished due to the band's decision to split not long after it was released, and thereby ensuring a legacy that could not be sullied by an attempt to match or surpass it.With a mere seven tracks stretching the running time to almost an hour, Transcendence Into the Peripheral is neither an album for the faint-of-heart nor the attention-deficient. Psycroptic and Dillinger Escape Plan squeeze more riffs into one song than diSEMBOWELMENT use on this entire album, but the dark, brooding introspection and mystical reflection conjured by the languid drone of a track like "A Burial at Ornans" is the exact and diametric opposite of the shock and awe tactics of those bands.

The album opens with "The Tree of Life and Death", a strange combination of grind, death and ambience that was the inspiration for the Alchemist track "Soul Return" that came out two years later. diSEMBOWELMENT's minimalist style is perfectly represented here. Incredibly slow riffs reverberate forever until an occasional vicious blastbeat or grind section comes from out of nowhere and then subside again almost immediately for a truly haunting atmospheric section to take its place. Vocals ooze out of the distance as a variety of low, growling rumbles, whispers, shouts and chants that only accentuate the band's stark aura of dismal gloom. That's just the first track. "Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory" is bleaker still, with a soul-withering atmosphere almost painful to endure. The gentle acoustics of "Nightside of Eden" belie the abyssic despair of its spoken-word poetry as what at first seems like a lighthouse of hope is merely a corpse-light amidst further gloom.

Then diSEMBOWELMENT rolls out the depressing triumph of "A Burial at Ornans", a hope-crushing fourteen-minute colossus so slow the main riff drones on for almost a minute and a half. This track is a genuinely remarkable achievement, the centrepiece of the album's agonising existential journey, a journey completed by "Cerulean Transcience of All My Imagined Shores" that slowly lifts the listener up from the depths of mortal despair and through a gateway to ethereal existence.

Transcendence Into the Peripheral is precisely as its title suggests, the most complete musical metaphor for spiritual enlightenment thus far conceived and an unassailable masterpiece never to be bettered.

1. The Tree of Life and Death


2. Your Prophetic Throne of Ivory


3. Excoriate


4. Nightside of Eden


5. A Burial at Ornans


6. The Spirits of the Tall Hills


7. Cerulean Transcience of All My Imagined Shores

Rating: 100%

IRON MAIDEN: Piece of Mind

Produced by Martin Birch

Released: 1983

Tomorrow evening Iron Maiden will be playing their first Sydney concert since 1992 and I will be there somewhere screaming and pumping the air with my fist like 15,000 other people. So what better time than now than to examine the album that is arguably their best?

Lacking a title track and with its comparatively understated cover art, there was some initial concern that Iron Maiden's fourth album wouldn't catch on. Of course, the concern was unfounded, because where The Number of the Beast had opened the gates of the world to Iron Maiden, Piece of Mind blew them off their hinges. On this album, the band's creative talents truly flowered and the material benefited from the input of four songwriters for the first time. With the exception of one track, Piece of Mind is as flawless an album as Iron Maiden would ever make. It is here that the band not only finally developed its signature sound, but perfected it, and it could be argued that they never quite matched this ever again.

As usual, primary songwriter Steve Harris took as his inspiration an eclectic group of influences, from avant-garde French cinema, to the Charge of the Light Brigade, to the pulp war fiction of Alistair Maclean. Tempering this was some fine contributions from Bruce Dickinson, Adrian Smith and Dave Murray. Dickinson's majestic "Revelations" is almost spiritual, a glorious rebuttal of the accusations of devil-worshipping levelled against the band by America's lunatic fringe after the previous album. Murray's portrait of insanity "Still Life" has a haunting quality and is nicely slotted into the running order after the typical Harris gallop of "The Trooper". On "Die With Your Boots On", the boys sound like they're simply having a blast as they poke fun at wanton prophecy-makers and their faithful. "Flight of Icarus" is Maiden at their catchiest, with an awesome vocal display from Dickinson as he holds his note over half of Smith's climactic solo. The oft-overlooked "Sun and Steel" is also something of a gem, an uncharacteristically simple song with a massively catchy chorus.

The album's only real fault lies in the lyrical awkwardness in some of the songs, most particularly the infamous "Quest for Fire", the only bonafide filler track on Piece of Mind. Almost redeemed by some typically nifty guitar work from the incomparable Murray and Smith, it still fails because almost every line is nothing short of embarassing absurdity. Bruce Dickinson has conceded in interviews that he often took Steve Harris to task over some of his lyrics. I can't imagine the argument that must have taken place when he skimmed his eyes over babies like "They fought a vicious, angry battle" and "In a time when dinosaurs walked the earth", but I'm sure it must have been a doozy. The album's closing epic, "To Tame a Land" suffers from lyrical excruciation also, but considering the subject matter, Frank Herbert's overblown and almost incomprehensible sci-fi saga Dune, that is perhaps understandable. Despite this, "To Tame a Land" remains one of Maiden's best long songs, with Murray and Smith conjuring up some nice Middle Eastern-inspired motifs and Dickinson again shows the incredible power of his voice, even if the task of trying to fit words like "He is the Kwizach Hadarach/He is born of Caladan/And will take the Gom Jabbar" into a workable metre must have had him pulling out his (then) considerably long hair.

While Piece of Mind was to be eclipsed by the monumental Powerslave and the incredible two-year tour that accompanied it, it remains debatable as to whether Iron Maiden ever actually bettered this album. No matter if they did or not, Piece of Mind is easily one of the best heavy metal releases of all.

1. Where Eagles Dare


2. Revelations


3. Flight of Icarus


4. Die With Your Boots On


5. The Trooper


6. Still Life


7. Quest for Fire


8. Sun And Steel


9. To Tame a Land

Rating: 98%

MORTAL SIN: Mayhemic Destruction

Produced by John Darwich and Mortal Sin

Released: 1987

In 1987, even the name Metallica was practically unknown outside of a hardcore cult following in this country. Few people then could have possibly conceived of a Sydney band recording an album of primeval thrash metal that would bring them notice throughout the world. Mortal Sin had only played live six times when they went in to record this album in July 1986. Released six months later, Mayhemic Destruction captures the essence of the embryonic Australian thrash metal scene in its minimalist production values and the immediacy of its delivery. As Australia's first major metal release, this album is as important today as it was when it first appeared.

At times lyrically awkward and with a somewhat thin guitar sound, there's no denying that despite this Mayhemic Destruction can still be held up as a minor thrash classic. Taking their cues from both the Bay Area and the German schools of thrash, Mortal Sin came up with something that wasn't particularly original but was easily on par with anything being produced elsewhere. The epic, Metallica-inspired "Lebanon" towers over the rest of the tracks, with only the Kreator-style title track really coming close, but it's hard to call any of the songs duds. For the most part, the lyrics are throwaway and often forced ("Stay down there with all your mates and lie yourself to death" runs one line from 'Liar') and Matt Maurer's nasally vocals a tad monotonous, but all of the songs are infectiously catchy and memorable enough that even after barely hearing them in 15 years, they came back to me while I was merely reading the lyric sheet. Had Mortal Sin let some of these tracks mature a little more before they were recorded, they could have been better still, but the most interesting thing of all is that Mayhemic Destruction was originally designed only as a demo. With that in mind, it's actually quite staggering to think how powerful and crushing these songs would have sounded with a decent production job.

1. The Curse


2. Women in Leather


3. Lebanon


4. Liar


5. Blood, Death, Hatred,


6. Mortal Slaughter


7. Into the Fire


8. Mayhemic Destruction

Rating: 78%

THE HAUNTED: The Dead Eye

Produced by Tue Madsen and The Haunted

Released: 2006

When this fifh album by The Haunted first lobbed there was a lot of conflicting opinion and almost immediately, when the band slowed down during "The Flood" and Peter Dolving started crooning like Eddie Vedder, I knew why The Dead Eye had polarised opinion. On the one hand, this is a remarkable album so different from anything The Haunted had ever done that the band should be applauded for even attempting it. On the flipside, it's so different from anything they'd done before that you're left wondering what the hell they were thinking. Had this been their first album it could well have been a different story, but The Dead Eye is The Haunted's fifth. After four albums, a band's fanbase can reasonably expect any album that follows to be reasonably similar to the ones before. After all, that's usually why people like a particular artist in the first place. Throwing out a curve ball can be a career-damaging move.

Throughout The Dead Eye, Peter Dolving wears a variety of vocal guises and more than once proves himself to be a fairly noteworthy mimic. There's the aforementioned Vedder reference, a hint of Aaron Stainthorpe in "The Fallout" and in the eerie coda of "The Guilt Trip" even an allusion to Thom Yorke. This is assuredly the most noticeable aspect of the album and it certainly feels as if this is very much Dolving's record, with the song structures deliberately determined by his varying voices, be it a rasping scream, a mellow croon or a frantic whisper. Musically there's a clear emphasis on riffing over soloing, something that many would undoubtedly suggest puts this into the dreaded realm of metalcore, but The Dead Eye is simply too diverse and interesting for that. Past albums have shown that this band is more than able to do the standard Swedish melodic death/thrash thing rather well; The Dead Eye shows that they can also do other things.

This is still very much a metal record, and was perhaps one of the best metal releases of 2006, but its unexpected direction and progressive and experimental nature caused a lot of people who just wanted The Haunted to stay as they were to accuse them of all kinds of things from selling-out to band-wagon jumping. Like all bands that change horses midstream, The Haunted found themselves in the interesting quandary of having made an excellent album that much of their fanbase - rather unfairly - hated.

Whatever one thinks of it The Dead Eye removed any preconceptions about The Haunted, possibly for good.

1. The Premonition


2. The Flood


3. The Medication


4. The Drowning


5. The Reflection


6. The Prosecution


7. The Fallout


8. The Medusa


9. The Shifter


10. The Cynic


11. The Failure


12. The Stain


13. The Guilt Trip

Rating: 93%

DREAM EVIL: Evilized

Produced by Fredrik Nordström

Released: 2003

I have to admit that I didn’t get into Dream Evil’s debut effort as much as many others did, but within seconds of ‘Break the Chains’ blasting out of the speakers here at the Sound Cellar I knew I was listening to a killer metal album. There’s too many labels to attach to metal these days, and it would be easy to apply one to Dream Evil, but in the end what it all boils down do it that this is just true heavy metal like classic Maiden and Priest, fast, catchy and deceptively simple songs with hook-laden riffs, great vocals and endless air-punching choruses. Guided by the vision of guitarist and keyboard player Fredrik Nordström, who also happens to be one of Sweden’s top metal producers, Dream Evil combines all the best elements of all the best heavy metal there is, from thrasy power metal like ‘By My Side’ and the aforementioned opening track, to truly classic anthemic stuff like ‘Children of the Night’ that sounds like in was recorded in California in the mid-1980s!

There really isn’t a bad song on here. Even cheese like ‘Made of Metal’ is palatable and the power ballads ‘Forevermore’ and ‘The End’ are just as catchy and well-construted as the rest, without being the overwrought dreck such things have become these days. Evilized is 100% pure metal, and it doesn’t come much better than that.

1. Break the Chains


2. By My Side


3. Fight You til the End


4. Evilized


5. Invisible


6. Bad Dreams


7. Forevermore


8. Children of the Night


9. Live a Lie


10. Fear the Night


11. Made of Metal


12. The End

Rating: 82%

BLUE ÖYSTER CULT: Secret Treaties

Produced by Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman

Released: 1973

After two early albums on which they blatantly (but skilfully) ripped off everyone from Black Sabbath to Cream and even the Grateful Dead, in 1973 Blue Öyster Cult and their Svengali-like manager Sandy Pearlman brought forth their one true masterpiece.

Secret Treaties is by all accounts a concept album, with the songs forming something called the Imaginos Cycle, a tale set in some kind of chaotic universe wherein events have no specific timeline so past, present and future all happen at once. The idea is so confusing that it's difficult to see how it all fits together, and it's more likely that this "concept" was invented after the fact (the band -- or Pearlman at least -- was not above such things), but nevertheless, Secret Treaties is arguably Blue Öyster Cult's most consistent release, a near-perfect portrait of one of America's most unique 70s rock bands at the height of its creative power.

Beginning with the surging, organ- driven pop-rock of "Career of Evil" - with lyrics by Patti Smith - Secret Treaties lovingly shows off Albert Bouchard's deft songwriting with a combination of nifty drum work, multi-layered guitars, typically blistering soloing from Buck D'harma and the band's patented two, three and sometimes ever four-part vocal harmonies. Pearlman's bizarre and thought-provoking lyrics take a truly star turn too, although Richard Meltzer's truly strange "Harvester of Eyes" tops the charts for oddness: "Well just last week I took a ride/So high on eyes, I almost lost my way". For tripped out lyrics, few other acts came close to Blue Öyster Cult.

"ME262" is flat-out hard rocking boogie like a meaner, dirtier version of Status Quo and represents possibly one of the band's most misunderstood songs, with some people at the time believing that merely writing a song about Hitler's Luftwaffe meant a band had to be endorsing Nazism in some way (in spite of the fact both the lyricist and vocalist were Jewish men born in the mid-1940s). "Harvester of Eyes" has a nice chugging riff that would have been nothing short of face-ripping at the time and, as mentioned, lyrics that border on the absurd. "The Subhuman" and the suitably rocking "Dominance and Submission" with its apparent themes of incest and other sexual depravity are also worthy tracks, but the best is left until last. "Flaming Telepaths" is absurdly simple and immediately catchy, displaying a keen pop sensibility that would more fully emerge on later albums. It builds to a climax that ends sharply with the gentle piano intro of "Astronomy", a sublime track that is without doubt one of BÖC's greatest ever songs. Perhaps better known these days as a Metallica cover, "Astronomy" encapsulates every element of the band's best qualities in six minutes of sophisticated eloquence.

After Secret Treaties BÖC would move into a more commercial direction, before touching on true metal even later, but they would never again piece together an album as complete as this. Don't listen to this expecting to hear the heaviest rock ever recorded either, because by today's standards it's very tame indeed, but this is an album that inspired a generation of metal acts to come and for this reason alone it's one to check out.

1. Career of Evil


2. The Subhuman


3. Dominance and Submission


4. ME 262


5. Cagey Cretins


6. Harvester of Eyes


7. Flaming Telepaths


8. Astronomy

Rating: 94%

SOILWORK: Stabbing the Drama

Released: 2005

Soilwork has been a favourite around the Sound Celler for a number of years. The albums from The Chainheart Machine through to Natural Born Chaos virtually epitomised the modern Swedish metal sound in almost the same kind of way that At the Gates and Edge of Sanity had done ten years before and it was clear that the band was destined to erupt from the shackles of mere cult appreciation at some point. The relative disappointment of the commercially-aimed Figure Number Five showed Soilwork beginning to pander to a wider audience, but even that failed to prepare me for the watered-down, generic travesty they were to become with this, their sixth album.

Stabbing the Drama is a weak, boring pop-metal album, but it’s not because it’s pop-metal that it’s weak and boring. It’s weak and boring because it is so formulaic and safe there’s nothing to surprise the listener or to keep them interested. Each song repeats the same harsh verse-clean chorus-breakdown-chorus recipe again and again, while being completely devoid of ideas, hooks or anything like real riffs. It’s bad enough when bands recycle bits of previous albums, but it’s much worse when they start recycling the same songs, especially when those songs aren’t very good in the first place. After a couple of good albums, a couple of great ones, and one that was just okay, Soilwork was due for a stinker, and Stabbing the Drama is it.

1. Stabbing the Drama
2. One With the Flies
3. Weapon of Vanity
4. The Crestfallen
5. Nerve
6. Stalemate
7. Distance
8. Observation Slave
9. Fate in Motion
10. Blind Eye Halo
11. If Possible

Rating: 20%

IRON MAIDEN: Iron Maiden

Produced by Wil Malone

Released: 1980

Already the leading band of the so-called New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement with a UK Top 40 single behind them by early 1980, it was clear that Iron Maiden was a band with a future ahead, though no one could really have said how big. After this album appeared on April 14 that year, surely none but the foolish could have denied they had the potential to go very, very far indeed. Along with the debuts of Def Leppard and Raven, Iron Maiden is perhaps the best example of NWOBHM ever made. While the production is ordinary, even for the early 1980s, Maiden's songwriting, energy and enthusiasm blazes through with every second of the playing time.

Iron Maiden opens with the wailing dual guitars of "Prowler" and from that moment is a certifiable classic. Simply trying to get such a catchy track out of one's head in a hurry is a pointless exercise. Even this early, Iron Maiden had laid a key cornerstone for their further success: the ability to write intrinsically catchy riffs and melodies into any song regardless of how elaborate the arrangement. Few could listen to the twin harmonies immediately before and after the guitar solos in album centrepiece "Phantom of the Opera" -- the prototype for the mighty epics Maiden would later write -- and not remember them for a long, long time. Most of the tracks are deceptively unpretentious compared to many of those that would appear on later albums, but every one of them is a clear cut if a somewhat unpolished gem. Will Malone's minimalist production (the band claims he did almost nothing during the recording sessions) and Paul Di'anno's snarling vocals lends something of a raw, punkish character to proceedings, but the playing and execution is very much heavy metal. Dave Murray and Dennis Stratton trade solos with an almost deviant glee, in "Transylvania" the band lays down a blueprint that every melodic death metal act from Gothenburg would later copy and it's possible that songs like Metallica's "Fade to Black" may never have been written had it not been for "Remember Tomorrow".

Iron Maiden is undeniably one of the most important metal albums of all. Not only was it the debut for one of the genre's greatest bands but its combination of rawness, speed and melody has provided the inspiration for two generations of music fans ever since.

1. Prowler


2. Remember Tomorrow


3. Running Free


4. Phantom of the Opera


5. Transylvania


6. Strange World


7. Charlotte the Harlot


8. Iron Maiden

Rating: 90%

SENTENCED: The Funeral Album

Released: 2005

With The Funeral Album, the curtain comes down on one of Finland’s best metal acts. Sentenced was one of those rare bands that was able to produce consistently fine albums and on what stands to be their final offering they have continued this proud record. Indeed, The Funeral Album is close to the finest album Sentenced has ever made, and that’s saying a lot. After all, this is the band responsible for the likes of Amok, North From Here, Down and Frozen; a group that went from being one of the leading lights of the early 90s melodic death metal invasion to perhaps the most important depressive Goth metal band in existence. This last act is Sentenced in all its guises, a band displaying all its creative facets for the final time.

Throughout, Sentenced flaunts their enviable gift for melody and songwriting. There is gentle melancholia like “We Are But Fallen Leaves” and “A Long Road to Nowhere”, dark Goth rock/metal hybrids such as “May Today Become the Day” and “Despair-Ridden Hearts” with its peculiar harmonica intro, and even a brief explosion of their early death metal sound in “Where Waters Fall Frozen”.

Yet as fine a collection of songs as The Funeral Album is, the final track eclipses them all. Fittingly, the band goes out on a grand scale and “End of the Road” could rank as the best song Sentenced ever put together. With a beginning that borrows heavily from Sisters of Mercy, this track enters under a dark cloud of gloom and depression and builds toward a crescendo that sounds like some kind of glorious redemption. As the last word from one of the best metal bands of the last decade, one could ask for nothing better.

1. May Today Become the Day
2. Ever-Frost
3. We Are But Falling Leaves
4. Her Last 5 Minutes
5. Where Waters Fall Frozen
6. Despair-Ridden Hearts
7. Vengeance is Mine
8. A Long Way to Nowhere
9. Consider Us Dead
10. Lower the Flags
11. Drain Me
12. Karu
13. End of the Road

Rating: 90%