Music

Iron Maiden

SSE Hydro, Glasgow

Stuart Morrison

three stars

THIS was some production. Iron Maiden's most recent album, Book of Souls, deals with the disappearance of the Mayan culture and so, naturally enough, the stage set was very much in that vein. Mystic runes, ruined temples, flames and boiling cauldrons – that sort of thing. All we needed were the band to emerge from pods and put their feet up on miniature pyramids and we would have had the complete experience.

Following a lengthy video introduction sequence, featuring the band's tame zombie, Eddie, a hooded figure emerged on one of the temples, plunging his head into a smoking cauldron. Why he was doing this was not explained, but it was soon revealed, to considerable acclaim, to be singer Bruce Dickinson, whereupon he and the band launched into If Eternity Should Fail, from that record. However it wasn't so much eternity but clarity which seemed to have failed, because for about thirty five minutes we were assailed by a sound mix so spectacularly awful that discerning what was being played often proved very difficult indeed. Everything was drowned in noise during a phase when it seems that the band played Children of the Damned, because Dickinson introduced it. Matters had improved considerably by The Trooper and had sorted themselves out for the highlight of the set, Book of Souls. A really heavy track, in the Ronnie Dio mould, it was brilliantly played, with drummer Nicko McBrain, ever smiling beneath piles of drums, giving a bravura performance.

Fear of the Dark and Iron Maiden – featuring a huge, inflatable, Eddie – brought the set to a close in fine fashion, before the encore of Number of the Beast. A fabulous looking show, but it took a while for the aural dimension to match that standard.