When a band like Iron Maiden comes to your town, it's a good enough reason to cancel all incoming and outgoing flights. It's just that monumental. It's just that epic. Seattle got a taste of that madness when the sextet brought "The Final Frontier World Tour" to the White River Amphitheater in June, promoting the band's 15th studio album among songs that spanned their impressive 30-year career.

For a show of this magnitude, the band got things right by using Gustav Holst's thundering "Mars, the Bringer of War" as the opening music. Red lights flickered from the skies to illuminate the stage, rigged up like the bridge of a space-faring battleship (keeping with the theme of The Final Frontier). Fitting as though "Mars" is, the intro might have stretched a tad too long - but when Adrian Smith struck the first notes of "The Wicker Man", all was forgiven and forgotten. With that, Bruce Dickinson, Dave Murray, Steve Harris and Janick Gers joined Smith and Nicko McBrain to take Auburn to the final frontier.

After the climactic ending of "The Wicker Man", things slowed down a bit with the moody intro to "Ghost of the Navigator", both from 2000's Brave New World. To be blunt, I've never been the biggest fan of "Ghost of the Navigator" (although the sheer visual of seeing Maiden perform the song live made up for it), so there we no complaints from me (or from the rest of the sold out White River Amphitheater") when McBrain and Harris followed it with the drum and bass intro from the classic "Wrathchild", from Killers (1983). Every arm was raised and every set of vocal chords was used for the chorus ("Wrathchild!"), and the song provided a welcome boost after things had slowed down with "Ghost of the Navigator". For "El Dorado", Dickinson advised that we not bother with the free MP3 of the song that was made available , and save our money for the real thing. Even if the chorus of the song lagged a bit, the pace and groove made for a good live performance.

As the chords of "El Dorado" faded into silence, they were replaced by the whistling bombs and explosions in the muddy fields of "Paschendale", arguably one of the best songs Iron Maiden have ever put out. The soft/loud dynamic was enhanced by dimming and brightening of the house lights which darkened and illuminated both the stage of the sold out White River Amphitheater. The massive chorus, led by the charging and galloping Dickinson, was echoed in plenty by everyone in attendance. Definitely a highlight of the evening.

The stop-start nature of the music continued with "The Reincarnation of Benjamin Breeg" and "These Colours Don't Run" - both great and highly entertaining songs, but a questionable in a live performance because of their long nature and many different structures. "Blood Brothers" is one of my favorite Iron Maiden songs, but I must confess that the soft intro-loud song-soft outro dynamic had started to get a little formulaic. Still, seeing one of your favorite songs from your favorite band being performed live is never a bad thing, and when Bruce Dickinson dedicated the song to the recently-deceased Ronnie James Dio, the horns thrown to the heavens and the "Dio!" chants captured the moment perfectly.

The tempo picked up with "Wildest Dreams" - not a bad choice for the usual faster album opener, but sandwiched between the see-above "No More Lies" and "Brave New World", seemed lost. Don't get me wrong, I really do love the later-era Iron Maiden, when Steve Harris' compositions began to take on a more epic and almost cinematic scope - but there's a world of difference listening to them on my computer, and seeing the same formula repeat again and again in person. Part of the "problem", if you would call it that, is obviously that Iron Maiden's discography is so extensive that they can't afford to dip exclusively in their 1980s, punk-infused heyday.

The other part of the equation is that Maiden played most of those songs during their last tour, 2008's "Somewhere Back in Time World Tour". Iron Maiden, to their eternal credit, have never been afraid to think and act outside the box; so to see them championing the long, moody epics at the expense of guaranteed crowd-pleasers (and live performance winners like "The Trooper" and "Run To The Hills") is a bold move by the band. It didn't always work that night in Seattle, but the fact that Maiden are out there and doing it says more for them than if they stuck with a tried-and-true formula. Still, if I was given a second opportunity to sing along with chorus of "Run To The Hills", I can hardly see myself complaining. 

(contd.)