Iron Maiden will be playing 33 North American concerts this summer, including an Aug. 15 show at Cincinnati’s Riverbend Music Center.
Tickets for the pioneering Metal band’s Cincinnati concert go on sale Friday, Nov. 16 at 10 a.m. through Ticketmaster. Fellow British metallers The Raven Age (featuring Maiden bassist Steve Harris’ son George Harris) are opening the North American dates.
Iron Maiden is viewed by many as one of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s most egregious snubs, given the band’s role in shaping and popularizing Heavy Metal music worldwide. Earlier this year during a spoken word tour in Australia, Dickinson had some choice words for the Rock Hall. Dickinson said, “Absolutely,” when he was asked if he thought his band should be in the Hall, then added that he feels the whole institution is “an utter and complete load of bollocks.” “It’s run by a bunch of sanctimonious bloody Americans who wouldn’t know Rock & Roll if it hit them in the face,” he continued. “They need to stop taking Prozac and start drinking fucking beer.”
Here’s what Dickinson said about Maiden’s forthcoming North American tour, part of a global venture dubbed ‘The Legacy of the Beast Tour,’ which will feature production and a setlist inspired by the band’s Legacy of the Beast mobile video game (via the tour press release):
“We’re excited to return to North America and share the Legacy Of The Beast Tour with all our friends there! We’re immensely proud of this show and we’ve had great reactions from the many fans who came to see us in Europe earlier this year. The production is based on our mobile game THE LEGACY OF THE BEAST which basically takes various incarnations of Eddie into many different Maiden Worlds. This inspired us to put together a stage show to take our fans through different Worlds and experiences set to appropriate songs. It is not that easy designing different Worlds on stage and we put a huge amount of work into this to make it work and the end result we feel is our most spectacular and certainly the most complex show to date. We’ve got all kinds of crazy things going on, including a replica Spitfire plane dominating the stage during ‘Aces High,’ tons of pyro, a giant Icarus, muskets, claymores and some truly marvelous flame-throwers which I have a hell of a lot of fun with, as you will see! And of course we have Eddie, as you’ve never seen him before, and absolutely loads of other surprises. I’ve had the time of my life playing with all these magnificent props on stage, it’s been fantastic, we can’t wait to bring this show to you!”
