I spent about 1.5 hours in a queue just to learn that there was no pit area at the front. So a waste of time it certainly had been. Anyway, got in and got my extra priced (280 DKK) Maiden "viking" t-shirt. Heard about 5 minutes of Lauren Harris (Steve's daughter) and learned that she is NOT exactly the next wonder in music and that Valby Hallen has a very unpleasant sound. Well, we already knew that already didn't we.
After more than 20 minutes of Maiden without any real vocal from Bruce (normally the best vocal in heavy) I decided I had enough and left my near stage row and walked down to the mixing area to try to educate a sound engineer, just to find out that the local staff didn't dare to approach the sound engineers and obviously didn't care if anybody could hear the vocal or not.
Well, I headed for a beer sale instead then (in Denmark it is allowed to drink beer AND hear music in the same room, something it apparently isn't in Sweden, so NEVER go see a concert in Sweden boys and girls. A lesson a lot of swedes obviously had learned already.) After a short while I went back into the crowd and after more than one hour the problem still wasn't fixed as such. I made my way back to the front rows and now you could hear a treble version of Bruce which sounded absolutely horrible. I think I preferred the earlier version with no voice at all.
I'm not really sure when exactly the bloody morons woke up down there, but the non-"A Matter of Life and Death" numbers ("Fear of the Dark", "Iron Maiden" and the rest of them) were in the normal Maiden version with music AND vocal.
I won't go into discussing whether the new album is good enough to be played entirely (it is not), whether Maiden thought they played a good concert (they probably did) or whether the Copenhagen crowd was a fantastic one (it certainly was.)
I will however say this: The sound engineers were deaf (and I mean DEAF!!!), the local staff were incompetent and Valby Hallen should NOT be used for music! It still sounds like a bloody bunker! Vocal or not.
Sorry Maiden, I guess you did all you could. But that just wasn't enough, because we couldn't hear it. What a disappointment.
Rating: 
Band: Iron Maiden
Venue: Valby Hallen, Copenhagen, DK
Concert Date: 2006-11-10
Support Band: Lauren Harris
Content Type: Concert Review
Language: 
Updated: 2006-11-12 10:20
Created: 2006-11-11 15:30
