Iron Maiden's 13th studio album, Dance Of Death, and the subsequent world tour which continues this month in Japan, have arrived at an interesting time for their fans. With loud, hairy guitar bands more in vogue than they have been for years, care of The Darkness, the appearance of a Maiden T-shirt in the latest Justin Timberlake video, and the famous lyrical reference to them in Wheatus' modern classic 'Teenage Dirtbag', it might be said that Iron Maiden are currently... dare I say... fashionable!

But as any die-hard Maiden fan would tell you, the EastEnder metal heroes have a lot more going for them than classic rock posing and guitar histrionics. Underneath the steely sheen and threatening aura, there's much lyrical substance and in the case of the new album, there are at least two songs which are destined to become epic standards - the title track and 'Paschendale', a moving journey through the trench horrors of World War One.

The current tour set list majors on the new material and, typically, the music is enhanced with over-the-top theatrics, courtesy of one of the most athletic frontmen in rock, Bruce Dickinson, and a lighting and set design which arguably surpasses anything that the band have presented before.

The Dance Of Death tour marks a major change in the audio department for Iron Maiden, with Kent-based ML Executives taking over the rental contract from long-time supplier Britannia Row and providing an EAW KF760/761 line array system. It's a milestone for the band and their FOH engineer since 1981, Doug Hall, who traditionally have deployed their own Turbosound TMS-3 cabinets which were supplemented by Brit Row.

Hall explained the background: "When it became apparent that our TMS-3 medium throw cabinets weren't keeping up, we started using Brit Row's services and the company would also hire out Maiden's system for a number of projects. It was a healthy situation for a long time.

"Then the line array phenomenon kicked off and I could see that this was where I'd want to go, but it was a while before I found a speaker cabinet that I thought would be the right one for this band. V-DOSC was a great product sonically and we'd performed with it at events like Rock In Rio, but I'd have to drive it to the max. So I was constantly putting off making the decision to change to a curved line array until I found what we have now."

Hall discovered EAW's KF760/761 array in 2001 and wasted no time in putting into use with the band last March. "It was a great relief when it came along," said Hall. "It takes advantage of the curved line array principle but being horn-loaded inside, it gives us about another 6db of sensitivity and that was a clinching factor. This was the rig I was waiting for and until then I wasn't going to make any changes because the Turbo rig was still working for us up to a point.

"In fact, the band still own their Turbo system and we carry some of the cabinets with us for drum fills, side fills and different things. They sold off a portion of the system but we still have about 78 boxes at the band's storage facility."

The system at Earls Court consisted of (per side) a main hang of 18 KF760s with two KF761 shorter throw boxes on the bottom. At the sides were eight KF760s with two KF761s. For delays there were six KF760s a side at the rear of the house and another six KF730s a side for the side rear of the house. In addition there were 12 SB1000 subs, two KF750s for side bleacher coverage on the floor and six KF300 infills.

"This is the first time we've used the 730," commented Hall. "The dispersion angles are pretty similar to the 760, but it's a miniature version. ML's Gary Marks has already had some out for side hangs at Wembley for Deep Purple and they worked very well, so I think they will become very popular for flown side fills in similar or even smaller situations."

Travelling with the band is line array technician Mike Hackman who entered the fray during the previous American leg, when Tennessee-based HyPhy Sound provided a Crown-amplified version of the same EAW system. "Mike has a fantastic grip on attacking the room just right with this speaker design for this kind of artist," praised Hall. "We don't use the text book set-up - we bend the rules and push a little, and Mike gets what's required superbly."

Asked how easy is it for the flown units to be used adjacent to each other, Hackman said: "With this system I've found it really easy as long as you get a good angle between the two. I tend to work on 60¡-65¡ and we pull it in quite close but then turn it outward fairly wide, cutting down the amount of cone filtering from the two arrays that you're getting. I find it tends to cover better this way. It's very linear and the coverage is strong in the mid bleacher sections. The delay issue becomes less of a problem when the rig is much closer together."

ML Executives purchased a pair of Out Board's CM6 six-channel controllers and HC6 remotes to manage the two KF760 hangs for the tour. Gary Marks said he needed to handle two points per hang plus a common pull-back point on each side of stage, and found the CM6 offered the best flexibility and control for the diversity of venues being played.

Prior to this tour, Hall's experience of ML Executives was limited to just one event. "We went to Iceland several years ago and ML flew in an enormous KF850 rig with Crest amplifiers and it sounded fantastic. But this is the first full tour we've done with ML and I'm really enjoying the relationship although I don't actually see a big difference in the way things are managed. We've always been very professional in our approach and the people we work with tend to have the same aspirations. Everyone knows their gig. It's just different faces, that's all."

Earls Court is far from being every engineer's favourite acoustic environment. How was Hall coping? "It's a hell of a barn but compared to the last time we played here I think we've achived a great result," said the engineer. "The philosophy's the same though - not to try and send the sound all across that huge room. "The idea is not to excite the room but get the audio into the public's ears. That's why we have a pair of rear delay speakers hitting the upper balcony and two side delay systems, so that the main speaker array isn't really projecting to the very back of the room. It's covering the lower mezzanine, the lower deck area and even down on the floor we have a couple of KF750s as outfills. So we don't want to blast it from the stage and rattle it off the walls but be much more directional."

With such a radical departure in the PA department, did it follow that Hall would want to make changes to the FOH control, simply because he would be hearing things differently? "Well, every room sounds different and you don't change the equipment for every date on the tour because of that," explained Hall. "I'd say that what's coming out of the desk is the same as before, but the public are hearing it differently because of the new system, and it's a major improvement.

"We've hardly changed a thing since the Brave New World tour [2000]. I'm still using a Midas Heritage 3000 and it's only really the loudspeaker management system that's different because of the change to the EAW line array. We're now using all XTA processors which are great, plus for Earls Court we've added three BSS Varicurves with radio remote operation for EQ-ing the delays. The console and outboard dynamics control and FX all remain identical - it's the old 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' mentality."

Even the microphones are identical, nearly four years after the last major tour. The spec includes Shure SM87 condensers for vocals, Beyer 740 large diaphragm condersners for drum overheads and a Beyer 834 on Steve Harris's mighty bass rig.

One big difference, however, was the method of recording shows, as Hall explained: "We used to carry something called the Rack & Roll which was a rack device at stage left in monitor world, put together by Mick McKenna who helped install Steve Harris's studio. The rack was filled with top quality mic pre-amps for recording gigs and Les Lambert would come out to operate the 32-track Mitsubishi tape machine. With the advent of the new hard disk recording devices, Steve bought a ProTools HD2 system, so that normally lives out at FOH with me, and the signals come from the Midas console's mic pre-amps and go through the Apogee converters to the HD2. I have a pair of rifle mics in the downstage truss so we can do all these full-on multitracked recordings direct to disk that sound amazing."

Steve 'Gonzo' Smith remains on monitor mixing duty as he has since the Virtual XI tour, and like Hall, he is sticking with his favoured desk - the Midas XL3. The onstage loudspeaker layout features four EAW SM200 wedges, two SM12s, Bruce Dickinson's two EML wedges, seven Turbosound 2 x 15" wedges, plus six EAW KF850s and four Turbo TMS3s for side fills. Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith also use Shure PSM 700 IEM systems. Crest amplification powers all of the stage system except for the EML wedges which are driven by Carver amps.

LIGHTING
Martin Brennan's lighting design for Dance Of Death is nothing short of a Par-tastic exhibition of all that is great and good about traditional arena rock. His mostly conventionals-based rig features 48 bars of six, 12 bars of four ACLs, 20 single cans for truss toning/set lighting, 62 Wybron Coloram colour changers and five follow spots. Enhancing the system, but not detracting from it, are 18 Martin MAC 2000s and 20 High End Studio Colors.

Brennan has been delighted to receive votes of confidence from his peers who have been entertained by what is one of the biggest displays of conventional lighting this side of Queen! He said: "I've had so many people come up to me from other bands, including Justin Timberlake's crew, telling me they hadn't seen a full-on rock rig for years.

"Few bands in this genre tour such a huge production in terms of the scenic elements. It seems to be a thing of the past, but a fine tradition to be part of all the same. Certainly you don't see many shows with 400 Par cans anymore. But so many people have said that it's a great thing to see. The moving lights are just used to complement them. As good as moving lights are, they can't create a classic ACL fan or a huge 'bar of six' look in the same way. It's a lot of work but I'm very proud of the results."

The MAC 2Ks were specified as a result of a colleague's recommendation, and Brennan has been impressed with their reliability, brightness and even colour temperature from unit to unit. "They're physically the right size for me and they work well in conjunction with the Studio Colors. If I'd used x.Spots attached to the moving pods it would have been completely wrong, because as units they are too big for the job. So the 2Ks are definitely giving me everything I want.

"I originally wanted to use the Studio Colors as wash lights but because the set is so strong I had to re-think it all during production rehearsals. I'd programmed a couple of songs without the set in situ and when the set arrived it was just wasted. So I ended up using the 2Ks more as workhorses for set lighting rather than simply complementing the Par cans. It's stretched me because I've had to get a lot more looks from the lights than I had originally planned.

"There's also more strobing going on than I've ever done before because it feels so appropriate on some of the more dramatic new pieces like 'Paschendale'. It's a shorter set but I'm drained at the end of every show because of the sheer intensity."

Brennan's choice of control desk for this tour is a WholeHog II. "Flying Pig have always produced marvellous desks," he commented. "We were doing festivals this year on the Give Me 'Ed Til I'm Dead tour and I could have done the shows on the Avo desk but it would have been a little harder for me. The cloning facility on the Hog and the 3D spacing which I'm using to programme the moving lights are godsends. I'm using the desk as a kind of hybrid between an Avo and a Hog - not much cue stacking as such, but using the flash buttons in an Avo way and using as many facilities as appropriate from a Hog background."

As a parting shot, Brennan was keen to praise the work of one of his lighting contemporaries. Whilst touring in Europe, he had time to check out the latest Placebo production at the Fila Forum in Milan, and made special mention of Max Conwell's design. "The show looked superb," said Brennan. "In fact, I haven't seen Max lighting better!"

Iron Maiden - Dance Of Death European Tour
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