Trivium

Has any heavy metal band, nay any band at all, ever been elevated to such godlike status as Iron Maiden? Such is the respect they command that the decision to showcase their fourteenth studio album,_ A Matter of Life and Death_, on a gargantuan world stage by playing all 72 minutes straight up didn’t even raise the tiniest of eyebrows. Yet in the deepest, darkest parts of Yorkshire there may have been some murmurings of dissent after all. As the heavenly sextet surveyed their loyal subjects they may have felt a slight tinge of disappointment to see a lacklustre Sheffield crowd politely applauding between tracks, hardly a chorus of exultation from a multitude of cherubim and seraphim. Bruce does point out that Father Christmas had made an appearance – one bloke in a Santa hat – that was about as festive as the crowd could manage in this season of goodwill towards men.

By this point Lauren Harris’ opening salvo of trite metal-by-numbers had been duly applauded perhaps mostly out of fear of offending her dad, the bass-wielding lynchpin of the mighty main act. Californian thrash metal poster boys Trivium had received an unequivocal ‘bah humbug’ and a stubborn reluctance to acquiesce to their demands for a circle pit during ‘Gunshot to the Head of Trepidation’. Winning over the belligerent Maiden faithful with an aural assault of frenetic ditties plucked from_ The Crusade _proved to be about as successful as a campaign of expansion on the Russian front during the winter months.

It’s never possible to please everyone, is it! Those who had come along expecting a greatest hits set will have to wait until Download 2007, I’m afraid. ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’, ‘Two Minutes to Midnight’ and ‘Iron Maiden’ may have received the most rousing reception, but tonight is all about the new material. Maiden retain the immediacy and relevance recaptured in the Brave New World era, and ‘Different World’ and ‘These Colours Don’t Run’ light up the war-bunker stage set, while Bruce bounds about like a child with his tummy full of blue Smarties. Janick Gers still makes you chuckle, whirling his axe around his head, and fooling around with an infantry uniform-clad Eddie. Even after over 30 years, the sound is still as explosive and earth-shattering as a (insert your own war-related metaphor here).