A Matter of Life and Death and A Matter of the Beast were two concert tours by

Iron Maiden Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band formed in Leyton, East London, in 1975 by bassist and primary songwriter Steve Harris. While fluid in the early years of the band, the lineup for most of the band's history has consisted of Harr ...

from 2006 to 2007. The first tour was unique, as the set list primarily consisted of the band's most recent release, '' A Matter of Life and Death'', in its entirety, although this got a mixed response from audiences. Unusually, the first leg did not include " The Number of the Beast", a song which Iron Maiden had previously played on every tour since its inception. The second part of the tour, in celebration of '' The Number of the Beast's'' 25th anniversary, saw the band playing four songs from said album as well as five from ''A Matter of Life and Death'' (although they had initially planned to play five songs from both releases).

Set

Throughout the tour, the stage would be decorated to look like a

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...

trench, with the wall canvases featuring painted sandbags and barbed wire, the stage floor decorated with barbed wire and mud as well as actual sandbags placed in front of the monitors. The podiums at the end of each runway came with actual barbed wire and

searchlight A searchlight (or spotlight) is an apparatus that combines an extremely luminosity, bright source (traditionally a carbon arc lamp) with a mirrored parabolic reflector to project a powerful beam of light of approximately parallel rays in a part ...

s (operated by Dickinson) and the bodies of two parachutists would appear from the lighting rig during "The Longest Day" (during "Iron Maiden" in 2007). As with previous tours, Nicko McBrain's drumkit featured a

Sooty Sooty is a British children's television media franchise created by Harry Corbett incorporating primarily television and stage shows. The franchise originated with his fictional glove puppet character introduced to television in 1955, with the ...

puppet, this time dressed in army attire. During "Iron Maiden," a tank would appear from the back of the set (the rear runway transforming into the tank's wheels), topped with a binocular-wielding Eddie with flashing LED lights. The walk-on Eddie would also appear as an armed soldier during " The Evil That Men Do."

Opening acts

* Lauren Harris *

Trivium The trivium is the lower division of the seven liberal arts and comprises grammar, logic, and rhetoric. The trivium is implicit in ''De nuptiis Philologiae et Mercurii'' ("On the Marriage of Philology and Mercury") by Martianus Capella, but t ...

* Bullet for My Valentine * 3 Inches of Blood *

Motörhead Motörhead () were an English rock band formed in London in 1975 by Lemmy (lead vocals, bass), Larry Wallis (guitar) and Lucas Fox (drums). Lemmy was also the primary songwriter and only constant member. The band are often considered a prec ...

Machine Head A machine head (also referred to as a tuning machine, tuner, or gear head) is a geared apparatus for tuning stringed musical instruments by adjusting string tension. Machine heads are used on mandolins, guitars, double basses and others, and ar ...

Parikrama Parikrama or Pradakshina is clockwise circumambulation of sacred entities, and the path along which this is performed, as practiced in the Indic religions - Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and Jainism. In Buddhism, it refers only to the path a ...

In Flames In Flames is a Swedish heavy metal band, formed by guitarist Jesper Strömblad in Gothenburg in 1990. Alongside At the Gates and Dark Tranquillity, In Flames pioneered the genres known as Swedish death metal and melodic death metal. During the ...

Mastodon A mastodon ( 'breast' + 'tooth') is any proboscidean belonging to the extinct genus ''Mammut'' (family Mammutidae). Mastodons inhabited North and Central America during the late Miocene or late Pliocene up to their extinction at the end of the ...

Setlist

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of '' The Number of the Beast'', the band announced that they would play five songs each from ''The Number of the Beast'' and ''A Matter of Life and Death'' throughout the 2007 part of the tour. However, only four songs from ''The Number of the Beast'' were actually played, which meant that "Children of the Damned" would be the only rarity in the setlist.

Tour dates

Reference

References

External links

Official website

A Matter of Life and Death Tour Dates
{{DEFAULTSORT:Matter Of Life And Death Tour Iron Maiden concert tours 2006 concert tours 2007 concert tours