It’s hard to know which polls to trust in the final days leading up to Tuesday’s monumental election, but Bruce Dickinson’s Wells Fargo Center poll Friday night was particularly unscientific.

“Does anyone here own a DeLorean?” the Iron Maiden frontman asked the sold-out crowd, though even he was doubtful about the only positive response he got. This, leading to a story about the 1.21 gigawatts of power required set in Back to the futurewas an introduction to “Time Machine” from the most recent release in 2021 Senjutsu.

Dickinson failed to mention whether he owns one of the infamous cars, but time travel would explain how the 66-year-old singer maintains his booming voice and boundless energy after more than four decades on the road . (His predecessor in the band, original singer Paul Di’Anno, died last month at the same age.)

Maiden’s current “The Future Past” tour is built around “slipping through the portal of space and time,” as Dickinson put it. After the usual blast of UFO’s “Doctor Doctor” through the Wells Fargo Center speakers, the arena pulsed with green and purple neon lights as Vangelis’ score from Blade Runner played, suggesting a trip back to the retro-futuristic 1980s.

With an extensive catalog to draw from, Iron Maiden typically alternates career-spanning tours with setlists more focused on specific albums or time periods. Their last stop at Wells Fargo on the 2019 Legacy of the Beast tour was their first. This time, they drew mostly from Senjutsu and the sci-fi-themed 1986 Somewhere in Timeplaying five songs of each in a set of just two hours.

The show opened with two songs from the previous album, “Caught Somewhere in Time” and “Stranger in a Strange Land”. The second marked the first appearance of Maiden’s mascot, Eddie, a 12-foot-tall version of him who briefly strode onto the stage wearing a trench coat and wide-brimmed hat. He would make two more appearances during the evening: doing sword tricks in his Senjutsu samurai regalia during the close-up shooting of “Iron Maiden” and in his sci-fi Somewhere in Time mask, engaging Dickinson in a gun-and-cannon shootout for “Heaven Can Wait.”

After leaving most arena rock shows, no matter how good the concert, I usually wish I could have seen the band in a more intimate setting. Iron Maiden is a rare exception; they are a band that works best on a large scale. Steve Harris’ bass lines, the raucous solos traded between all three guitarists, Janick Gers’ guitar constantly swirling around his neck, Nicko McBrain’s massive drum kit and Dickinson in constant motion, the band with it could hardly be contained in a smaller space. venue. Not to mention the backdrops that change for each song, the fire cannons that shoot out poles and bursts of flame, and of course the enormous inflatable Eddie head that looks out over the stage.

Some of it can get a little silly, but unlike so many hot and angry heavy metal bands, Iron Maiden always seem to be having a great time up there. Dickinson’s profanity-laden playfulness is humorous, even referencing Monty Python to move from “Death of the Celts” to “Can I Play With Madness?” The triple-guitar team seemed delighted to spot a crowd-surfing Santa during “Fear of the Dark.”

For most long-running bands, refusing to play the “hits” or loading a set so heavily with new material could lead to an audience riot. Not so with Iron Maiden. While there were certainly a few disappointed newcomers in the house, Maiden fans tend to be unwavering. This is a band, after all, with a penchant for long, multi-part songs with subjects based on ancient history, British literature and science fiction. There is a certain amount of nerdiness.

How else to explain the roar of approval that greeted “The Prisoner,” a relatively obscure piece from 1982 The number of the beast? The play is based on the short-lived British sci-fi series of the late 1960s of the same name, clips from which were played on the backstage screen. Its rarity was enough to thrill the crowd.

The same goes for Somewhere in Time “Alexander the Great”, which had not been performed live before this tour. It’s an eight-minute ancient Greek history lesson in the form of a galloping prog-metal epic – perhaps the only time a mosh pit could coincide with an account of the Battle of Arbela.

Still, the biggest reaction of the night inevitably greeted them A piece of mind the classic ‘The Trooper’, a blistering anthem inspired by ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ with one of the most indelible riffs in metal.

The show opened with a 45-minute set by Mongolian folk-metal band The Hu (insert your own Abbott & Costello joke), which combined traditional instruments and throat singing with pounding beats and blaring guitars. The band’s martial ragers paralleled Maiden’s fascination with history, suggesting that perhaps Dickinson’s DeLorean had made a quick detour to visit the Golden Horde.