Review: Iron Maiden time traveled through their own heavy metal history at a sold-out Wells Fargo Center

It’s hard to know which polls to trust during these last few days leading to Tuesday’s monumental election, but Bruce Dickinson’s survey of the Wells Fargo Center on Friday night was particularly unscientific.

“Does anybody here own a DeLorean?” the Iron Maiden front man asked the sold-out crowd, though even he was dubious about the one positive response he received. This, leading into a spiel about the 1.21 gigawatts of necessary power established in Back to the Future, was all an introduction to “The Time Machine” from the band’s most recent release, 2021’s Senjutsu.

Dickinson failed to mention whether he has one of the infamous cars in his possession, but time travel would be one explanation for how the 66-year-old singer maintains his soaring voice and boundless energy after more than four decades on the road. (His predecessor in the band, original singer Paul Di’Anno, died last month at the same age.)

Maiden’s current “The Future Past” tour is built around “slipping through the portal of space and time,” as Dickinson put it. After the usual blast of UFO’s “Doctor Doctor” through Wells Fargo Center speakers, the arena pulsed with green and purple neon lights as Vangelis’ score from Blade Runner played, suggesting a journey back to a retro-futuristic 1980s.

With an extensive back catalog to draw from, Iron Maiden typically alternates career-spanning tours with set lists more focused on specific albums or time periods. Their last stop at Wells Fargo, on 2019’s “Legacy of the Beast” tour, was the former. This time around, they drew largely from Senjutsu and 1986’s sci-fi-themed Somewhere in Time, playing five songs from each over a set that ran just short of two hours.

The show kicked off with two tracks from the earlier album, “Caught Somewhere in Time” and “Stranger in a Strange Land.” The second marked the first appearance of Maiden’s skeletal mascot Eddie, a 12-foot-tall version who briefly strode on stage sporting a trench coat and wide-brimmed hat. He would make two more appearances during the evening: doing sword tricks in his Senjutsu samurai regalia during set closer “Iron Maiden,” and in his sci-fi Somewhere in Time guise, engaging Dickinson in a gun-and-cannon shootout for “Heaven Can Wait.”

Upon leaving most arena rock shows, no matter how good the concert, I usually find myself wishing I’d been able to see the band in a more intimate setting. Iron Maiden is the rare exception; this is a band that operates best on a grand scale. Steve Harris’ striding bass lines, the screeching solos traded between all three guitarists, Janick Gers’ guitar constantly twirling around his neck, Nicko McBrain’s massive drum kit, and Dickinson in a constant blur of motion, the band could hardly be contained in a smaller venue. Not to mention the changing backdrops for every song, the fire cannons shooting pillars and bursts of flame, and of course the enormous inflatable Eddie head that glared out over the stage.

Some of it can get a bit silly, but unlike so many dour and angry heavy metal bands, Iron Maiden always seems to be having tremendous fun up there. Dickinson’s profanity-laden banter is full of goofball humor, even referencing Monty Python to segue from “Death of the Celts” to “Can I Play With Madness?” The triple-guitar team looked delighted to spot a crowd-surfing Santa Claus during the moody “Fear of the Dark.”

For most long-running bands, refusing to play “the hits” or loading a set so heavily with new material might lead to an audience revolt. Not so with Iron Maiden. While there were surely a few disappointed newcomers in the house, Maiden fans tend to be diehards. This is a band, after all, with a penchant for long, multipart songs with subject matter drawing on ancient history, British literature, and science fiction. There’s a certain amount of nerdiness baked in.

How else to explain the roar of approval that greeted “The Prisoner,” a relatively obscure track from 1982’s The Number of the Beast? The song is based on the offbeat and short-lived late-’60s British sci-fi series of the same name, clips from which played on the screen behind the stage. Its very rarity was enough to excite the crowd.

The same goes for the Somewhere in Time deep cut “Alexander the Great,” which had never been played live prior to this tour. It’s an eight-minute ancient Greek history lesson in the guise of a galloping prog-metal epic — perhaps the only time when a mosh pit might coincide with a recounting of the Battle of Arbela.

Still, the biggest reaction of the night inevitably greeted the Piece of Mind classic “The Trooper,” a blistering anthem inspired by “The Charge of the Light Brigade” boasting one of metal’s most indelible riffs.

The show opened with a 45-minute set by the Mongolian folk-metal band The Hu (insert your own Abbott & Costello joke), which combines traditional instruments and throat singing with stomping rhythms and roaring guitars. The band’s martial ragers paralleled Maiden’s fascination with history, suggesting that perhaps Dickinson’s DeLorean had made a quick detour to visit the Golden Horde.