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The Canadian Tire Center in Ottawa was the place to be on October 15 as Iron Maiden was in town along with Within Temptation as their opening act.

As expected, there were not a lot of people when Within Temptation started their  45 minutes set with the songs "The Reckoning" and "Paradise (What About Us?)". Few diehard fans were banging their head and pumping their fist to their music,  but that was as far as it went regarding the crowd reaction. Contrary to other bands, Iron Maiden gives a lot of room to their opening acts and signer Sharon Den Adel took advantage of every inch of it. She interacted with the fans throughout their set in English and in French and got them to participate a little more as the show went on, but you could see that most fans were watching them because there was nothing else to do. Guitarist Ruud Jolie and Stefan Helleblad were having a blast on this big stage and were extremely dynamic. Even bassist Jeroen van Veen was all over the place trying to get the crowd going. The band also played two new songs from their most recent EP ("Don’t Pray For Me" and "Entertain You"). All in all, it was a great performance by Within Temptation and hopefully they gained a few fans after their short set.

It was now time for Iron Maiden to get on stage after their usual introduction ("Doctor Doctor") and fans got to their feet and screamed their appreciation for them. The band played three songs in succession from their most recent album Senjutsu, the title song, "Stratego" and "The Writing On The Wall". This was to be expected as the band had stage props reflecting the Japanese architecture. A samurai Eddie even came on stage during Stratego and had his usual fun with the crowd and with the band members.

After these songs, the stage went dark and it took a good five minutes for the crew to bring down the Japanese props so the regular show could go on. They could have at least played an instrumental backtrack during that time or shown videos on the screens on each side of the stage instead of leaving the fans waiting in the dark. Once the show got under way again with the songs "Revelations", "Blood Brothers" and "Sign Of The Cross", we could tell the band was back into its comfortable universe. Everyone knew where to go and what to do on stage and fans were now going ballistic. 

The band followed with "Flight Of Icarus" where we could see the huge figure of the young boy himself hanging at the back of the stage while Bruce used his flame throwers at will during the song. After that we had the barrage of fan favourites that never seem to leave an Iron Maiden setlist. I’m talking of "Fear Of The Dark", "Hallowed Be Thy Name", "Number Of The Beast" and "Iron Maiden". Just like that the main set was over and it was time for the encore. As the band members came to the front of the stage, it was also the first time that we could see Nicko McBrain!

The two encores were composed of rest of the band usual songs like "The Trooper" and "Run To The Hills" as well as "The Clansman" before ending the night with "Aces High" and the army plane flying overhead.

The band members were having a blast on stage, mainly Janick Gers, as he was running around and doing his crazy stage antics as usual. He seemingly over extended his stage craziness at the end of "Iron Maiden" to the likes of Bruce because he had to jokingly ask him if he was finished. The only one that did not seem to have as much fun as the others was Adrian Smith. He was serious all night, going through the motions while chewing his gum and playing guitars, maybe he had an off night, who knows.

Iron Maiden is Iron Maiden and fans would not want it any differently, but I have to say that their setlist needs major improvement as they always play the same songs no matter what tour they are doing. I understand that the younger fans seeing the band for the first time want to hear the classic songs, but if you saw the band recently, you know exactly what you are going to get. They need to see what their fellow Brits are doing as they completely revamped their song list on their second US tour of the year. They even added a song that they had not played live in over 30 years! Now, if I am a diehard Iron Maiden fan, that is exactly what I want to see!

That being said, Iron Maiden, gave the fans another awesome performance and left them wanting more!