The Iron Maidens: live review

The Iron Maid­ens at Fryshuset Klubben Stock­holm, 10 April 2019 – review and pho­tos by Stephen Boyle

Hav­ing fol­lowed these ladies for quite some time via social media, YouTube and oth­er dig­i­tal plat­forms and hav­ing missed them a cou­ple of times on pre­vi­ous tours, I was excit­ed to see that they intend­ed to kick off their 2019 Euro­pean Tour right in my back­yard in Stock­holm. The venue is a firm favourite of mine, as it is a nice inti­mate space and I have seen sev­er­al out­stand­ing bands there in the last cou­ple of years. Sit­u­at­ing myself at the front, right on the bar­ri­er, I had an unhin­dered view of the entire stage. I didn’t have to wait long before the Iron Maid­ens hit the stage.

This was the first show on their Euro­pean tour and their first time in Swe­den and they got a rap­tur­ous recep­tion from the crowd as they thun­dered their way through Iron Maid­en clas­sics from the 1980’s. The band were impres­sive on stage, with every mem­ber look­ing com­fort­able and con­fi­dent in their play­ing.

Being a gui­tarist, my inter­est lay with watch­ing the twin gui­tar attack of Court­ney Cox and Nik­ki String­field. I was not dis­ap­point­ed as both gui­tarists tore through the set with ease. My posi­tion at the bar­ri­er meant I was in direct line of fire of Court­ney Cox’s amp, and when she kicked in her boost ped­al for her solo spots, it was almost a reli­gious expe­ri­ence as I could feel every note pass through my body. The entire sound was very good and, apart from a few open­ing show teething prob­lems that did not impact on the qual­i­ty of the band, the show seemed to go off with­out any major issues and, in my opin­ion, was a great start to their Euro­pean Tour.

After the show I got the chance to meet the girls and I have to say, they were the most down to earth and hum­ble peo­ple I have had the plea­sure of meet­ing, even down to shar­ing very weird jokes about Wales with Court­ney Cox.

After fol­low­ing the band from a dis­tance for sev­er­al years, my first encounter with them live was a ter­rif­ic expe­ri­ence and one I will be repeat­ing again just as soon as I am able.