LIVE REPORT: Bruce Dickinson

Kulttuuritalo, Helsinki; June 13th, 2024
A Bucket List Event

If you know almost anything about me, you’d know that the works of Bruce Dickinson (and Iron Maiden) have had a profound effect on my life. They were one of my hugest sources of inspiration back when I was a teenaged maniac who spent all her time writing lofty fantasy stories while dreaming of being a writer. However, as far as I recall, there was no tour for “A Tyranny of Souls” back in 2005, or if there was, it surely didn’t come anywhere near me over in Canada. As such, Bruce’s solo career is of the sort that had a massive impact on me, while I’ve never had the chance to see any of that material live. So when “The Mandrake Project” was announced, I was less enthusiastic about the potential for new music and more about the potential for live shows. To my fortune, I was able to attend the event at Helsinki’s Kulttuuritalo on June 13th, 2024, to check off the longest-standing artist from my bucket list. 

To get a minor annoyance out of the way up-front, what the hell is with venues, socials, etc. not mentioning the opening act!? If Kulttuuritalo’s website says that Bruce Dickinson is playing on June 13th with the show at 20.00 and the doors are opening 1½ hours before the show, that sets an expectation for me to be seeing Bruce Dickinson playing at 20.00, not Temple Balls. This honestly rather fucked up my whole evening, because I had scheduled to pick up my partner from work, which would have been exactly perfect if Bruce had started at 20.00. However, because there was an unlisted opening act, my partner had to wait around at work for an extra hour to get picked up… Kulttuuritalo (and other venues/promotors), please get your shit together, this is really irritating. 

Now, I digress, let’s talk about the good stuff. First of all, that setlist! Did I ever get to hear an absolute heap of my old favorite tracks! What a joy to experience songs like “Accident of Birth,” “Laughing in the Hiding Bush,” “Jerusalem,” “Chemical Wedding,” “Tears of the Dragon,” “The Alchemist,” and “Darkside of Aquarius” live after having loved them for years and years and years! It’s hard to even pick a highlight from among them, because they’ve all be favorite tracks of mine for decades now (and I’m not a big fan of rankings). And, it’s also worth mentioning that the song selection from the new album included tracks that were among my favorites like “Afterglow of Ragnarok” and “Rain on the Graves.”

Bruce himself is, as ever, a bundle of energy and it was interesting to see how different he was in a solo show compared to how he is with Iron Maiden. Of course, part of that relates to the size of the stage and the number of props that he has to work with, but truly, for a man of 65 who had cancer less than 10 years ago, he’s still putting on an absolutely mighty performance, showing off 10x the energy of the rest of his band, who all appeared around half his age, give or take a decade here and there. I’ve known that Bruce is a quality performer since I first saw Maiden back in the early 2000s in Canada, but it’s really impressive to see how he doesn’t seem to have lost any steam in those past 20 years, no matter what life threw at him. 

Let’s take a moment to talk about the band too. I was very heavily thrown back to the time I saw Guns ‘N’ Roses back in 2005ish, when we expected the band to be a bunch of nobodies trying to prove they were awesome and they ended up blowing our socks off. This was a similar vibe. Not to say that these were a bunch of nobodies, but I hadn’t ever heard of any of them before. I admit that I don’t really care who Bruce’s band is, so long as they do a good job of the material, but these guys pulled it off very well considering none of them happened to be Adrian Smith or Roy Z. Shout-out to the Swiss guitarist, who played at least one of my favorite solos essentially note-for-note flawlessly from what I remember on the album (it might have been “Chemical Wedding,” but don’t quote me). 

I was particularly excited to have gotten to hear “Darkside of Aquarius” as the final track, as it seems that some places got “The Road to Hell” in its stead. Now, “The Road to Hell” is a bangin’ song that is probably great live, but “The Darkside of Aquarius” did spend a period of time as my favorite Bruce song, so I was naturally even more amped to hear it than I was about “The Road to Hell,” so I got lucky this round! However, that encore… woo! I’ve dreamed of seeing “Navigate the Seas of the Sun” since I first heard it in 2004 (no, that’s not a typo) and it has been one of my favorite ballads and love songs since the first time I spun it. If there was one true bucket list song on the setlist, it was that one and I feel overjoyed that I got to experience it live, even just once. 

The rest of the encore was just as great, featuring “Book of Thel” and “The Tower,” which are of course among my favorite tracks as well. Okay, it goes without saying that I think “Accident of Birth” and “The Chemical Wedding” are flawless albums, so any song you could play off them would surely hit, but those made for really awesome live tracks and every song in the set had some really great moments, like chant-alongs in many songs or just the crowd overtaking the vocals with their mad enthusiasm. I often complain about Finnish crowds, but seldom need to when it comes to Iron Maiden or Bruce Dickinson—they were chanting and cheering the whole time and the floor looked quite alive. 

I hate to admit that I had a personal sadness after the show though. If I had had an opportunity to see a show like this 10 years ago, it surely would have been life-changing for me. However, after years of music journalism and obligations thus related, I simply don’t get the same feeling from live music anymore that I once did (particularly from metal music). If there was going to be one show that would invoke that adrenaline and joy, it should have been this one. As such, I think it might be time for me to take a long hiatus from live coverage (Tuska Festival and Kosmos Festival notwithstanding of course). If there’s no joy to be found in even fulfilling a lifelong dream… it seems like I just need a break. And if I do need one, then a Bruce Dickinson show is one hell of a way to go out! 

Now, personal hang-ups aside, I do really think this was a terrific show and I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get more energy from it, but that was very much a me-thing. My date for the night, who is hardly a music fan, let alone familiar with Bruce’s solo material, said it was a great show. I’m sorry that the sound quality up in the seats on the left was a bit mushy, because a lot of the great guitar and bass lines were very murky. Fortunately, Bruce has masterful mic technique though, so it was always possible to hear him, no matter where he was in relationship to the mic. What a pro! If you get a chance to catch this tour, don’t miss out, you might just have some childhood dreams fulfilled as well. 

Setlist

1. Toltec 7 Arrival (intro)

2. Accident of Birth

3. Abduction

4. Laughing in the Hiding Bush

5. Afterglow of Ragnarok

6. Faith

7. Jerusalem

8. Chemical Wedding

9. Tears of the Dragon

10. Resurrection Men

11. Rain on the Graves

12. Frankenstein (The Edgar Winter Group cover)

13. The Alchemist

14. Darkside of Aquarius

Encore

1. Navigate the Seas of the Sun

2. Book of Thel

3. The Tower

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