When Iron Maiden played for the first time ever in India , in 2007 while they were promoting their latest album 'A Matter of Life and Death' , I came out of the venue halfway disappointed and very fucking tired. Bad organization yet again by Venkat Vardhan and his company DNA, inexcusably poor mix at miserably low volume, the wanker Janick Gers and the mere presence of the boring new songs that took up a decent chunk of their stage-time, especially in the beginning.

In short, it was a great show provided
a) You liked that new album
b) You've got no ear for good sound
c) You don't mind Janick doing the Blackmore/Yngwie poses without anywhere near their chops.

All I personally wanted was to see Maiden pull off a setlist from the classic Bruce-era with an ass owning sound and props. And this is what the 'Somewhere Back in Time Tour' intends to do across the world in 2008 and Mumbai, India was chosen as the venue to kickstart their tour after the overwhelming response they got last year.

Prominent KvltSite members from places far and wide got together at Ravi's pad and then assembled later at a pre-decided point to hit the venue together for full effect, only to get there on time to catch the last few minutes of the always reliably shitty biggest-band-in-India called Parkirama. We were glad to have missed Lauren Harris' show though. Soon enough, after a few songs on the PA which Sriram B claimed were all on the Vice City soundtrack, Doctor Doctor occurred followed by Churchill's speech and the band's grand entry with the goosebump inducing Aces High. The set on the stage appeared the same as last year's, except they'd painted them Egyptian and the background had a mix of the art from the albums in question. The band plodded through some of the absolute classics such as 2 Minutes to Midnight, The Trooper, Wasted Years, Run to the Hills, Powerslave, Number of the Beast and some pleasant surprises such as Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Heaven Can Wait and my pick of the evening, Revelations. They went on to perform a couple of songs that I personally don't care for anymore in 'Can I Play With Madness?' and 'Fear of the Dark' only to come back and boggle our puny minds with Iron Maiden, the only DiAnno song they'd perform this evening. Then came the encore with the brilliant Moonchild and closed it out with Clairvoyant and Hallowed Be Thy Name. I know, it falls a little short of the perfect set-list but I was quite happy with the selections overall.

Ok ladies, now that you've got that covered, let's go back to the first paragraph. Point 'a' got taken care of as mentioned above, didn't it? I never thought I'd ever say this, but Janick was actually more tolerable this time around, whenever you could hear him in the mix that is. Agreed, he shouldn't have taken some of the solos that Adrian should've taken but heck, a more tolerable Janick is good news for guitar enthusiasts. Point 'c' is kind of taken care of too.

Point 'b' was still relatively bad news though. On the plus side in this department were the drums and the bass; mixed a few notches better than the last time when they were just too loud and so reverb laden, it made Iron Maiden of all 80s bands sound like that shit band with a drummer who handles it single-handedly (haha!). Steve's bass sounded thunderous with just about enough mids to give him his signature tone and stayed that way throughout the night, unlike the guitars. I don't know if this is a recurring problem with this 3-Strat lineup of guitarists, but instead of sounding punchy, clear and in-your-face, the three guitars kept having their ups and downs, and sounded very noisy and buried instead. Adrian, my favourite guitarist of the band, especially had trouble at his end. Dave Murray was holding his side of things to perfection, yet I was disappointed by how the rhythm guitars came out in the PA. But the worst was, just like the last time, Bruce's vocal levels kept going off on a regular basis.

I can't help but speculate, could it have been the organizers? (In which case, fuck you again Venkat Vardhan) I've not been to a show organized by DNA in recent times with a halfway decent sound, while competition in same timespan have ensured Scorpions, Deep Purple, Sepultura and a few others a truly great sound. (Edit: More recently, DNA ass raped their hapless audience by giving total ghey sound for the Megadeth/Machine Head show. This happened when the site was down so we couldn't report it)

In any case, definitely watch this when they bring the show anywhere close to where you're at. You'll at least be blown away. All nerds watch out for the return of the Android Eddy.

Iron Maiden - Somewhere Back In Time Tour 2008