Awesome / Iron Maiden

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• The Metal Scream from "The Number of the Beast". It's so good that Bruce has never been able to replicate it since doing it for the first time, he can only come close to replicating it.
  • Made even better by the fact that Bruce has gone on record saying the scream was a result of his frustration with the song's producer, who kept making him redo the song's intro, which had the tricky time signatures.
  • The scream of "Rain!", in "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is pretty impressive as well, as is the scream at the end of "Flight of Icarus".
• Somewhere Back in Time tour. 45 days, 23 shows. See Flight 666 for details (and some excellent footage from 16 of those shows.)
  • Also awesome: Bruce Dickinson flew the tour plane on that tour and is a commercial airliner pilot. Yes, he has two of the most stressful jobs in the world.
  • Iron Maiden in 2008 playing in India, 30,000 people packed the stadium for the first big metal band to ever play in the 2nd most populated country in the world. History was made when the devil horns were thrown up in the whole crowd rocked out.
• Live After Death. Full Stop.
• Any time Eddie makes an appearance during one of their shows.
• Ozzfest 2005: "These colours do NOT FUCKING RUN from you asswipes!"
• Let's go to the point: anytime Iron Maiden appears on a stage is a CMOA. The band is thrice-distilled, pure awesome. Want proof? Watch Flight 666. There is a priest out there, who bases his sermons on their lyrics.
• In 2006, at the Nassau Coliseum (Uniondale, NY) gig of the A Matter of Life and Death World tour, some dumbass thought it would be a good idea to bring a sign that read "Play Classics" for a tour where Maiden would play the eponymous album. During "For the Greater Good of God", Bruce finally noticed the dickhead with the sign and tore it apart. While all you can see on the bootleg is Bruce having the dick hand him the sign, this video allows you to see the badassery from the front row.
  • On that note, any time Bruce yells at a dickhead in the audience.
• Maiden, who are older than Metallica, are open about how they don't mind people downloading their music for free at all. In summer 2003, Maiden toured America and select countries in Europe, a few months before Dance of Death was released, playing one song from the album. Bruce tells the crowd that as long as they buy the album, they don't give a fuck about people downloading their music.
• They are making a beer! And it's delicious!
• At their concert in Milan in 2013, during "Aces High", Nicko hit the snare drum way too hard and broke it. Instead of having the band stop the song, he played the snare parts on his lower tom until a roadie took the broken snare and put a new snare in its place. Watch the awesomeness here.
  • Bruce would then introduce "The Evil That Men Do" by saying, "The evil that men do lives on... But the good is oft interred with their bones... and so is the snare drum."
• "The Thin Line Between Love and Hate" from the Brave New World album. Maiden's first album with their modern line-up, with Bruce and Adrian returning after 7 and 10 years respectively. At the very end of this 8 minute+ song, Nicko can be heard saying "Oh, I fuckin' missed it."
• The "Final Frontier" music video pays homage to Alien among other space operas and horror films, and has fantastic cinematography and special effects to boot.
• Bruce flying a replica of Manfred von Richthofen's (as in the Red Baron) Fokker Dr.I in a WWI reenactment staged as an intro to their show at Sonisphere 2014 (while the footage is backed by "Paschendale"). There are no words.
• At a concert in Luxembourg in 2014, Bruce noticed a kid being beaten up at the front of the stage. Bruce then proceeded to give the attacker a full-on angry calling out, to massive applause. The epic starts at 2:20. the lesson? Treat people in the pit with respect, or Bruce will go all Papa Wolf on your ass.
  Bruce: Oi, fucking dickhead down there. Mister Crackhead, in the fucking denim shirt! Stop it! Stop beating people up down there! Fuckin' crackhead, alright?! Otherwise, somebody's gonna take you out, alright? Yeah. Yeah. I know you look like Axl Rose, but you're a fuckhead, alright?! Out of your fucking mind. Out of there, you there, dickface. Cut it, alright?! I've been watching you! Been watching you! Everybody else here is cool, EXCEPT YOU!
• The fact that "Moonchild", an amazingly intense song, was recorded in one take.
• Three words: SPEED OF LIGHT. Five years without any new material from Maiden, four successful years of touring and cancer horror surrounding Bruce Dickinson later, and Maiden come ripping back onto the scene in August 2015 with a brand new song that boisters out of the speakers with a sense of urgency not seen since the Dance of Death era, cowbell and a beastly scream from Bruce, tasty riffs abounds, mean as fuck drumming and some of the best production in years. Folks, Maiden are back.
  • Taking it a step further, the song gained 3 million YouTube views in 2 days.
• Four words: The Book of Souls. Two discs of concentrated awesome, containing three 10 min+ epics, such as "Empire of the Clouds", their longest song ever.
  • The album broke Amazon on release day, selling out all available copies in an hour.
• "Empire of the Clouds". Iron Maiden's first ever song that is close to 20 minutes, with some of the most utterly epic guitar riffs ever seen to date, and a truly chilling finale that perfectly shows the tragedy of the R101 Airship disaster. All written entirely by Bruce Dickinson on a piano. And he said "he isn't very good at playing the piano". Holy shit.
• The cover art for the "Run to the Hills" single features Eddie fighting Satan with a tomahawk, in Hell, surrounded by an entire army of demons. Nothing could possibly be more metal than that.
• "The Red and the Black" is a typically awesome Maiden tune, full of catchy riffs and hooks and a singalong chorus that is guaranteed to get the audience going when performed live. Well, the gig on 8 June 2016, in Arnhem, Holland, had a crowd who made not just the chorus a singalong, but the whole song.
  • And a similar thing happened in Gothenburg. In fact, Bruce gets so taken aback in the video that he jokingly tells the crowd "Your turn! ...not yet."
• In Seville on 14 July 2016, Bruce started ranting against the promoter for setting up a VIP pit in front of the stage, a custom that is increasingly common in concerts. But in Bruce's opinion "having to pay extra money to be here in front with us is bullshit". And he finished with "Fuck the promoter!" Yeah, this band IS fan-friendly.
• The music video accompanying "The Writing on the Wall": 5 Versions of Eddie (one with a tomahawk for Number of the beast, a pharaoh vomitting locusts for Powerslave, the cyborg from Somewhere in Time, one wielding a scythe for Dance of Death, and the final one revealed to be the samurai from Senjutsu) crashing a Mad Max version of Belshazzar's feast. The sight of Samurai Eddie taking on Handsome Squidward has to be seen to be believed.
• The opening of the Legacy of the Beast concerts with "Aces High". What's different about these performances? An almost life-size Spitfire dangling overhead that has to be seen to be believed.
• For 37 straight years, fans had hope that the band would play "Alexander the Great" live. Come 2023, the band did exactly that as part of the Future Past Tour.

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