Last night metal titans Iron Maiden played their first show at the KIA Forum in Inglewood, CA since 2016. This would be just the third show of the U.S. part of their Future Past tour, which kicked off in Chula Vista, CA four days earlier. The night before the KIA Forum show, founding member and bassist Steve Harris played one of Los Angeles’s most iconic venues the Whisky a Go Go with his own band British Lion. 

Back in 1975, Harris founded the group and by 1980 they released their self-titled debut album. In the last 44 years, Iron Maiden has released 17 albums with the most recent being Senjutsu in 2021. The main focus of this tour is Senjutsu and their 1986 release Somewhere In Time, but also songs spanning their entire career. Harris and Dave Murray are the only two members to have played on every single album, as frontman Bruce Dickinson joined by their second album Killers (1981) and guitarist Adrian Smith was out of the band from 1990-1999 with Janick Gers taking his place. There was also a 6-year period (1993-99) that Dickinson left the group. After their third album The Number of the Beast, drummer Nicko McBrain joined the band and has remained a member since. This would be the group’s longest running lineup.

As always, UFO’s “Doctor Doctor” served as an intro song before the group took the stage followed by “End Titles” from Blade by legendary composer Vangelis who passed away just two years ago. The opening song was “Caught Somewhere In Time,” from Somewhere In Time followed by another track from that album “Stranger In A Strange Land.” For song three, Maiden fast forwarded to 2021 with “Writing on the Wall” from Senjutsu followed by “Days of Future Past” also from that album. If you’re a Back to the Future fan, you’ll appreciate “The Time Machine” also from the same album. Dickinson began talking about the Delorean car which was used as a time machine in the movie and on the backdrop above the stage included the screen that showed the current time and date and the time and date being traveled to. In this case it represented the year the band was formed and the dates Somewhere in Time and Senjutsu were released.

The show continued with “Death of the Celts” before going back to in time with “Can I Play With Madness?” Future Eddie would return on the next song from Somewhere in Time, “Heaven Can Wait.” This would involve a shootout between Eddie and Dickinson. They continued with another song from that album which is the last song on it “Alexander the Great.” This is the first tour this song has been performed on. Iron Maiden then played one of their biggest songs the title track of 1992’s Fear of the Dark. The last song before the encore would be the title track of their self-titled debut album. 

As always, Harris’ galloping bass lines and rocket fast fingers gave the audience all of the thunder they would expect from an Iron Maiden show. Harris and the band haven’t lost a step, and they proved this mightily throughout the entirety of the show.