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After purchasing their concert tickets, a year ago, almost to the day, fans were lining up early at the Bell Center to see Iron Maiden and The Hu on this hot fall evening.

Fans were still getting to their seats when The Hu started their 50 minutes set with the songs “The Gereg” and “Upright Destined Mongol”. There are a lot of musicians on stage and not a lot of room to play with so most of them stay in their spot. Their music is loaded on the low end and makes me think of what Rammstein does on many occasions. Many fans were banging their head and pumping their fist to their music, but that was as far as it went regarding the crowd reaction but you could see that many fans were watching them because there was nothing else to do. 

The song “Yuve Yuve Yu” was a nice change with its faster tempo and made me think of Marylin Manson’s ‘”Beautiful People” at times. The crowd yelled ‘Hu’, ‘Hu’, ‘Hu’, during the song “Wolf Totem” and that really please the band. Their short set ended with “This Is Mongol” and I am sure that the band gained some fans tonight. I would not be surprised to see them touring North America as headliners in the near future.

It was now time for Iron Maiden to get on stage as UFO’s “Doctor Doctor” was playing. As this tour focuses on their Senjutsu and Somwhere In Time albums, it was only fitting that the band kicked things off with “Caught Somewhere in Time”. The crowd immediately started signing the chorus during the instrumental part as the song started. Since this song was only played when the band toured that album, you can imagine how crazy they all were. The band kept the ball rolling with “Stranger In A Strange Land” and this brought the first Eddie on stage for a brief instant.

The band followed with news songs and you could see that the fans’ enthusiasm quickly faded away during “The Writing On The Wall”, “Days Of Future Past” and “The Time Machine”. Fans were drawn back as soon as the introduction of “The Prisoner” was heard and they all pumped their fist to the rhythm of the music. As usual Bruce interacts with the fans, mainly in French and he took his time to explain the nature of the new song “Death Of The Celts”, or “The Clansman 2.0” as others would call it.

With all, or almost, their new songs behind us, the second half of the set was filled with hits and fans jumped and screamed their lungs out during “Can I Play With Madness” and “Heaven Can Wait”. Eddie came on stage a second time and had his usual fun with the crowd and with the band members. If you did not get any chills so far, you got them when they played “Alexander The Great”.

The band then played fan favourites that never seem to leave an Iron Maiden setlist. I’m talking of “Fear Of The Dark” and “Iron Maiden” (with a samurai Eddie). I would have expected a mention or a dedication to Paul Di’anno that recently passed away, but it seems that the band moved on from that already. In a blink of an eye and after a few goosebumps, the main set was over and it was time for the encore. As the band members came to the front of the stage to hand out souvenirs, it was also the first time that we could see Nicko McBrain!

The encore started with their best new song, “Hell On Earth” and incorporate just enough flames to burn down the stage without turning it into an inferno. The night ended with “The Trooper” and “Wasted Years”. For once, they skipped all the songs (well almost) all the songs that all the die-hard fans have heard way too many times already. Some will say that they replaced them with boring songs from their most recent albums, perhaps, but at least they changed things around this time around.

As usual, the band members were having a blast on stage and Janick Gers was running around and doing his crazy stage antics. That being said, Iron Maiden, gave the fans another awesome performance and they loved every second of it.