Iron Maiden
Co-op Live, Manchester
22nd June 2025
Iron Maiden roll into a sold out Manchester Co-op Live on their 50th Anniversary, Run For Your Lives tour. Playing tracks from across their career, fusing nostalgia, digital tech and superb musicianship, the night proves an audio visual triumph; delivering a truly spectacular performance.
A mournful, The Ides Of March wafts through the P.A. With the stage in darkness, screens above flicker into life and we’re transported through the decaying byways of London’s East End. Street lights cast eerie shadows across deserted alleys, and we pass long-closed pubs, their windows boarded and walls graffitied. Flashes of pyro briefly ignite the stage to reveal Bruce Dickinson, silhouetted with fist raised in clenched salute.
Slow, mournful guitar and heavy bass driven rhythm offer a deceptive air of calm before vocals kick in and the pace picks up to 100 mph. Welcome to Murders in the Rue Morgue. With images of nighttime Paris looming large behind, unrequested, the chorus thunders back and forth between singer and 20,000-plus raucous voices.
Wrathchild comes next, as a call and response game with the crowd continues. Extended guitar soloing punctuates the pummeling bass line, and new touring drummer Simon Dawson proves a powerhouse at the rear. Visually, we’re back in London as the band play amid darkened, semi derelict, graffiti adorned warehouses, and guess whose image looms large in the art work? Steve Harris, one foot atop his monitor, bass powering the track, heralds Killers, his stare gazing out into the multitude. As the riff kicks in, Bruce is screeching, urging us to scream back. He cavorts around the stage, his mic stand seemingly alive and throwing shapes while guitars interweave around driving drums and bass.
But this is merely a prelude . . .
Suddenly, there’s gargantuan Eddie marauding with an axe and slashing at the band as he prowls the stage. Tonight’s been impressive so far, but now the set erupts into life. Eddie’s physical incarnation eventually takes his leave, but as the track closes, he’s replaced in monstrous digital form. Looming menacingly above, his gigantic axe cleaving downward toward the darkening stage while staring outward, his face an expression of evil.
Phantom Of The Opera brings a predictable gothic backdrop. On stage, the song heralds the first operatic flourishes from Bruce’s voice and the band powers through in their famous galloping style. The Number Of The Beast perpetuates the gothic horror theme, backed by Nosferatu inspired monochrome images and punctuated by copious doses of pyro.
Powerslave transports us to a futuristic mythical Egypt where Pharaoh Eddie rules atop a giant pyramid. Dickinson sports a feathery head dress as he wanders a gantry conducting communal singing and challenging the godlike Eddie like a quasi pantomime villain. Below, on stage, a mid-song interlude sees duelling guitar pyrotechnics as the band try to outplay each other. A little later, Two Minutes To Midnight feels suitably apocalyptic. Powered by one of those unforgettable riffs, it sees massed arms raised aloft as the adoring thousands salute in unison.
Ghostly galleons, and an Albatross overhead. Rime of the Ancient Mariner is Iron Maiden’s homage to Samuel Taylor Coleridge and an awesome dose of prog rock. Part bombast, part ethereal, it’s really something special. The midsection’s celestial interlude sees spectral crew members turn skeletal as they sink beneath the waves. Dickinson, adorned in a ragged cloak, breathes hell and damnation as tsunamic waves crash, pyro explodes, and the protagonist’s vessel heads inexorably toward it’s doom. For anyone who appreciates prog rock as an epic audio visual experience, this is simply spectacular.
Seventh Son Of A Seventh Sons maintains the prog rock feel with an otherworldly futuristic backdrop. Digital Eddie takes centre stage with flames erupting from his head as planets swirl around him. There’s a debt to Edvard Munch’s The Scream as rocks turn to ogres and below, Dickinson dons a greatcoat to fuse Wagnerian rock and science fiction before ascending to an icy otherworld.
The set hurtles toward a close, and the mood changes. The Trooper brings jingoistic, sabre-rattling Eddie back on stage to confront the band as they deliver a string-driven sonic onslaught. Meanwhile, a seemingly diminutive red-coated Dickinson enthusiastically waves flags above them all. They close with the eponymous Iron Maiden. There’s no sign of prog here. It’s brutally powerful and filled with guitar pyrotechnics. The band urges on a crowd who need no urging while a truly demonic vision of Eddie leers monstrously behind them.
Inevitably, they’re back for an encore.
Sirens wail and searchlights scan the arena. Aircraft appear to fly out from the stage while Churchill’s voice booms. Aces High proves to be yet another tour de force and sees Bruce replete with a WW2 flying helmet mimicking digital Spitfires soaring behind him.
Final number Wasted Years finds the band surrounded by flashing, whirring digital tech, while simultaneously, above, we’re seemingly hurtling through time into space beyond. It seems an ironic and yet somehow fitting track to close.
So . . . Iron Maiden. 50 years; 50 Wasted Years. Absolutely not. Tonight we’ve witnessed a band still at the peak of their creative powers. A band cherishing their past while embracing technology to bring their heritage roaring into the present. The bones and muscles may be starting to creak a little, and very occasionally Bruce’s voice is lost in the maelstrom, but none of this diminishes the power of their performance. It’s been a perfect synthesis of sound and vision and a complete triumph. They take their leave and thank us for our support. And their closing words? “Thanks for almost 50 years. We can’t promise another 50, but we’ll be back.”
We await with anticipation.
~
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Words and photos by Trev Eales. More work by Trev on Louder Than War can be found at his author’s profile.
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