Two years into their 50th anniversary celebratory Run For Your Lives tour and nearing the end of the 16-date US leg, Friday night saw Iron Maiden roll into a balmy Los Angeles for two sold-out shows at LAFC’s state-of-the-art BMO Stadium. They were joined by two of the Big Four Thrash legends, Anthrax and Megadeth, in support.
Iron Maiden – Megadeth – Anthrax
BMO Stadium, Los Angeles – 27 September 2026
Words And Photography: Matt Roberts
Two years into their 50th anniversary celebratory Run For Your Lives tour and nearing the end of the 16-date US leg, Friday night saw Iron Maiden roll into a balmy Los Angeles for two sold-out shows at LAFC’s state-of-the-art BMO Stadium. They were joined by two of the Big Four Thrash legends, Anthrax and Megadeth, in support.
Anthrax
Anthrax got the evening’s proceedings underway to a rapidly growing crowd in the sun-soaked stadium at the unusually early time of 6:10 with a short, sharp, 40-minute blast of their most familiar tunes.
Various members of Anthrax have gone on record over the years expressing their admiration, love and respect for Iron Maiden, and the smiles on their faces make it patently clear to everyone present that they are having the time of their lives, thrilled to be sharing a stage with their heroes and biggest influencers.
Caught In A Mosh opens proceedings, instantly igniting the first pit of the evening, which continued to whirl and multiply for the remainder of the night. This was followed in quick succession by Madhouse, Metal Thrashing Mad and a brutal cover of Trust’s Antisocial before we had the sole sampler of the newly released Cursum Perficio album in the form of It’s For The Kids.
It’s all over too fast, though. Indians is announced as the set closer, but three minutes in, it came to an abrupt and unexpected halt. This allows Scott Ian the chance to address the audience whilst singer Joey Belladona took leave of the stage to shake hands with seemingly the entire front row of the barrier.
The reason for the stop in the music, as Ian explains to the crowd, is because the band is concerned that some of the audience are not having as much fun as they should be.
The crowd roar their disagreement at his accusations, but he rather tersely continues, accusing the people in the seats of sitting on their asses all week before instructing them to stand. “It’s Friday fuckin’ night. This is a Metal show,” he bellows, “Stand the fuck up!” And remarkably, to a person, they all do.
“As for the rest of you,” he continues, “If you’re in the pit, keep doing what you’re doing. If you’re not, jump up and down, bang your fuckin’ heads, throw your fist but LA, we’re all gonna fuckin’ move, okay?”
He ends his rant with an almost apologetic, “I’m not yelling at you. I’m just so happy to be here.” And with that they were gone.
Megadeth
Megadeth are next up, and like Anthrax before them, they take to the stage with a shortened setlist, in this case a nine-song, 50-minute blast through full of classic fan favourites.
By the time they appear, it is completely dark, a full moon dominating the sky over the stadium, and the instantly noticeable difference between the two bands is the demeanour.
Anthrax are smiles, energy, headbanging and almost demanding audience participation. Megadeth are more serious and static.
It is 25 minutes and five songs into the set before Dave Mustaine addresses the audience for the first time, thanking them for making the band’s 17th record, self-titled and released earlier this year, their very first Billboard 200 Number 1.
We have to wait for the introduction to set closer Holy Wars before we hear from him again, this time after a lengthy pause, perhaps to control his emotions, a heartfelt and at times inaudible thank you to all the fans in lieu of his pending retirement at the end of their current touring commitments in the Spring of 2027.
He follows the thanks with a dedication, “To you all.”
It dawns on me at this moment that this could be the very last time myself and almost every other person in the stadium could be seeing Megadeth and Dave Mustaine.
It was time for a small spot of contemplation and a personal thank you to Lars and James for their decision forty odd years ago that was ultimately responsible for the creation of Megadeth and their timeless Metallic catalogue.
Iron Maiden
For this observer, one of the most spine-tingling moments in all of music is when the opening bars of UFO’s Doctor Doctor filter into the air at an Iron Maiden concert.
They have been using the song as a set opener for 25 years now, so everyone in the building knows what it signifies and what is about to happen. Tonight is no different.
The crowd is at a fever pitch when the track ends, so it almost feels anticlimactic for darkness to descend before a two-minute animated video flashes to life on the massive back screen.
Focusing on the band’s formative days, in particular the East London boozers in which they learnt their trade a half century ago, it plays out to the accompaniment of The Ides Of March.
On its conclusion, a quick stroll through a dimly lit tunnel finds us face to face with Killers era Eddie. We’re accompanied by the opening strains of Murder In The Rue Morgue and mere seconds and a flash of light later, Simon Dawson’s machine gun intro takes us into the song proper as the band burst forth from the wings.
This is my first time seeing Dawson behind the tubs with Iron Maiden and my first thought, after years of seeing Nicko McBrain’s monster kit dominating the backline, was how strange this huge production looks with just a single bass drum kit sitting atop the riser. It looks almost lost.
On the whole, I feel the new ‘boy’ did a commendable job, but Nicko McBrain’s (and Clive Burr’s) boots are big ones to fill, and occasionally throughout the evening the fills and shuffles that McBrain seemed to do in his sleep appeared almost conspicuous by their absence.
The set list for the Run For Your Lives tour has been selected from Maiden’s catalogue up to and including 1992’s Fear Of The Dark, so you know there are going to be no fillers, just back-to-back classics. Perhaps the argument for an exception to this rule is the inclusion of Infinite Dreams, which Bruce Dickinson explained was seeing the light of day live for the first time in 35 years.
After Number Of The Beast, he explains to the crowd how he cannot understand where the 50 years since the band started have gone. “A ridiculous number,” he says and one he cannot even begin to comprehend, even though he has been a big part of it all. It is a sentiment felt by the vast majority of the audience.
Dickinson, as it has been said many times before, is quite simply a force of nature. Now sporting a natty line in man bob/ponytail, the energy the man possesses for a 68-year-old is quite simply staggering, although, to be honest, tonight he does not appear in the best of moods.
After Two Minutes To Midnight, he complains for the second time in the evening to no one in particular about the “fucking contact high” he is getting from all the “shit” being smoked in the audience. It is a theme he also hit upon on the band’s last appearance in town at The LA Forum. Marijuana is legal in California.
“None of it fills me with joy because I fucking hate it,” he continues as part of his introduction to my personal favourite, The Rhyme Of The Ancient Mariner.
“So does Steve, but smoke away because this next song is a track you can actually trip out to. Look at the sky if you’re smoking dope right now. What can you see apart from the moon? Can you see the gigantic sea bird? No? That’s because you’re all so fuckin’ stoned you can’t see it!”
Throughout the evening, he covers every inch of the huge stage numerous times, often at running speed, zipping from side to side and fitting in numerous costume changes as he goes.
At one point during Hallowed Be Thy Name, which had begun with him ensconced in an oversized bird cage perched on the backline as opposed to him waiting in his cold cell, I actually felt worried for his health when he started ascending a 45-degree ramp that spanned the stage from behind Dawson’s kit into the upper reaches of the lighting rig.
Being pursued by a floating ghoul should perhaps have aroused my suspicions, but it simply added to my concerns. It was only when he reached the summit, placed a rope around his neck and disappeared in a puff of smoke that I realised he had cleverly transformed into a hologram.
Energy aside, though, it’s his voice, which in my opinion is honestly sounding better than it has in years, that makes you realise exactly what a tour de force the man is.
The remainder of the evening flies by in a haze of nostalgia, aided by the ever-changing storytelling graphics that appear behind the band on the giant screen. First encore, Aces High, accompanied by a video of Eddie embroiled in a dogfight with an ME110, is dedicated to all the Americans who fought alongside the British and the Canadians in the Second World War. A Message for Mr Trump, maybe?
This is followed by crowd singalong favourite Fear Of The Dark. The evening draws to an all-too-soon conclusion with Wasted Years.
Fifty years is a long time in any context, but when you are talking about the life of a rock ‘n’ roll band then it seems like forever. On the evidence provided tonight, Iron Maiden have a lot more life still left in them.
It just remains to be seen how long they can maintain the attitude, commitment and enthusiasm required to enable them to continue to perform at this extraordinarily high level, a level that sees them still perched at the top of the world Metal tree.
In 1988, Iron Maiden penned the immortal line, “The evil that men do lives on and on.” Thirty-eight years later, and thankfully for the foreseeable future at least, so do they.
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