Iron Maiden returned to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on November 2, 2024 for its latest sold-out New York City performance. This is the band’s third tour featuring at least one show at Barclays, which has become their preferred NYC venue after headlining the world-famous Madison Square Garden for decades; the metal icons played at the arena for two nights during the 2017 Book of Souls and 2019 Legacy of the Beast World Tours. To the delight and intrigue of fans, The Future Past World Tour featured one of the band’s most unique sets in its illustrious history, including five songs the legends never performed live in the United States and two classics it had not showcased in nearly forty years.
When Iron Maiden announced the 2023-2024 The Future Past Tour, the metal titans promised to celebrate the 1986 Somewhere in Time record as well as the band’s most recent release, 2021’s Senjutsu. The selection of these two albums released thirty-five years apart presented Maiden with a unique opportunity to perform numerous songs that rarely – if ever – appeared in an Iron Maiden setlist.
Subsequent to the 1986-1987 Somewhere on Tour World Tour, the band sparingly performed more than a single SIT song on tour, with only "Wasted Years" and "Heaven Can Wait" appearing in setlists. For decades, fans clamored for more SIT, specifically the acclaimed but curiously overlooked “Alexander the Great,” arguably the best song Maiden had never performed live.
Senjutsu is the lone Iron Maiden album the band did not tour primarily in support of. Rather, the sextet performed the first three Senjutsu tracks (the title song, "Stratego", and "The Writing on the Wall") to open the 2022 leg of the Legacy... Tour before performing the vast majority of the prior Legacy set.
Maiden’s stage setup for much of the show fused the SIT and Senjutu eras, with the backdrop depicting some of the futuristic SIT cover art along with ancient Japanese-themed Senjutsu decor. To open the evening (after the obligatory UFO “Doctor, Doctor”), Iron Maiden introduced the Blade Runner soundtrack theme over the arena PA, which it also used as the intro track during the SIT tour. Maiden then played the “Caught Somewhere in Time” opening guitar harmony on the PA before exploding on to the stage with the dynamic SIT lead track, the first of a relentless fifteen-song, two-hour salvo. The band’s five instrumental musicians – bassist Steve Harris; guitarists Adrian Smith, Dave Murray, and Janick Gers, as well as; drummer Nicko McBrain – took the stage moments before front man Bruce Dickinson sprinted out for the opening verse of the stellar song that had not been performed since 1987 until last year’s first leg of this tour. The band seamlessly transitioned into another SIT classic “Stranger in a Strange Land.” "CSIT" into "SIASL" was, in many ways, the pinnacle of the evening given the former was not played in the United States in thirty-seven years and the latter had not been heard in a live setting this century.
Maiden then shifted its focus to Senjutsu, performing three tracks: the lead single "The Writing on the Wall", "Days of Future Past" (the tour's namesake and closest indication the band was touring in support of the record), and "The Time Machine." Then, Maiden turned back the proverbial clock to 1982's The Number of the Beast with "The Prisoner" before revisiting Senjutsu once again with "Death of the Celts"; the lengthy instrumental and solo sections in "Death..." were particularly powerful.
Next, Maiden performed its 1988 single "Can I Play With Madness" from Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, the album released subsequent to SIT. Thereafter came another highly anticipated highlight - the colossal “Alexander” – which thrilled the capacity audience for nine unforgettable minutes. The crowd-pleasing “Fear of the Dark” followed, and eponymous anthem closed out the main set.
For the encore, Maiden opened with the fifth and final Senjutsu track: the momentous “Hell on Earth” (arguably the best track on the album). With the stage background featuring Eddie as Lady Liberty in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and pyrotechnics throughout, the band captivated the audience. Up next was “The Trooper,” which received the most enthusiastic crowd response in sing-along fashion. Finally, Maiden delivered the anthemic “Wasted Years”, commemorating the SIT record once more.
With Iron Maiden's recent announcement of the highly-anticipated Run For Your Lives 2025-2026 World Tour celebrating the band's first nine records and its momentous fifty-year history, this will likely be the final opportunity for fans to see the vast majority of these seldom-played SIT tracks as well as Senjutsu material. The band sounds ageless as ever, and the enthusiasm and exuberance with which its members perform is remarkable given their thousands of live performances across the globe before millions of passionate fans.