NEW MAIDEN TOUR: WHAT WILL MAKE THE SET LIST?

Iron Maiden have announced another world tour –“playing 29 shows and visiting 26 cities in thirteen countries across 5 continents” with, natch, Bruce Dickinson piloting the Ed Force One again. And the tour isn’t coming to North America, so on a purely selfish level, this has no bearing on my life whatsoever — but the question on everyone’s mind, I imagine, is “What songs will they play?”

Dickinson gives hint in a statement about the trek:

“The set list will be different to this year’s tour. Of course we will play more songs from the new album and some other recent material, but we will include a healthy dose of older fan favourites as we will be playing to so many new faces who we know will want to hear those songs live for the first time.”

You’ll recall that while the band’s latest offering, The Final Frontier, was generally well-received, there was a lot of debate surrounding the set list for the band’s most recent trip to North America; some people, like me, thought it was way too-overloaded with newer material, while other fans, such as Vince, thought it was pretty fuckin’ great.

Personally, I’m at a point where I’ve seen Maiden live enough times that I don’t feel the need to see them once more just for the sake of seeing them; I would never again subject myself to watching them play their newest album in its entirety, and I don’t even think I’d pay to knowingly go see them do set list as heavy in post-Powerslave material again. I mean, obviously not ALL of that material is inferior to the band’s earlier output… just a lot of it is.

So on the one hand, hearing Dickinson say “we will play more songs from the new album and some other recent material” makes me shrug, and on the other hand, hearing me sayd “we will include a healthy dose of older fan favourites” (that’s Limey for “favorites,” FYI) makes me go “Yay!”

But it doesn’t really matter what I think; like I said, this tour ain’t coming nowhere near me. And the whole thing is gonna sell out one way or the other. I’m reasonably certain that Maiden could sell tickets to a farting contest at this point.

Get dates for the new tour here, then weigh in with your thoughts in our comments section.

-AR