Paleo Day 2; Heavy sunshine and heavy metal!

Good fortune- and the sun- continued to shine on Paléo, as Wednesday turned out to be another very hot and sunny day. The evening was set under the sign of loud decibels and heavy guitar riffs, with a fair amount of the line-up dedicated to metal. The main event of the night was obviously the hard-rock legends of Iron Maiden, and their crazy spectacle of a concert.

The coming of Iron Maiden to Paléo was obviously quite an event, a brought together a huge crowd of metal-heads and Maiden fans. They were hard to miss in the crowd, as it looked like on in every five people was wearing one of the band’s t-shirts! From craggy old rockers with long beards and tattoo-covered arms to young kids happily bearing their first ever Iron Maiden t-shirt, it was a motley crowd, assembled in front of the main stage for a celebration of loud music and explosive guitar.

The crowd was most definitely alive, and ready to go when the stage-hands stripped back the black fabric covering most of the stage, revealing an impressive construction of an abandoned Maya temple (in theme with their latest album, Book of Souls), and Bruce Dickinson, lead singer of the band, dramatically appeared on top of the set, back to the crowd and his hood up. Smoke billowed out from some magical stone pot, and flames lit up on each side of the stage, as the rest of the band ran out to meet the crowd and begin two hours of the best performance you could have hoped for.

Starting off with two songs from their latest album, things got real when they hit Children of the Damned, an all-time classic, introduced in perfect French by Dickinson. “Most of the people in the crowd probably weren’t born when this song came out”, he said, before adding “maybe your parents conceived you listening to this! 35 000 people right here, thank you Iron Maiden!” If the crowd had been enthusiastic up to then, they went crazy as everybody started singing, clapping and air-guitaring (it’s part of the fun!) through the song.

You could see little clouds of dust above the areas of the crowd turned into mosh pits, with ecstatic people happily dancing/throwing themselves onto each other (I must admit I was one of them!). The beauty of such a crowd is that although these places can be quite rough, they are based on mutual respect, and every time someone slipped, there were immediately eight hands ready to pick them back up again. Very different from some of the techno concerts were you just find people who want to be aggressive and don’t give a damn about the others.

The band didn’t fail to deliver some crazy guitar solos, from all three guitarists and also from bass player Steve Harris. Running across the stage, from one side to the other, throwing their guitars up in the air or grouping up to play together, they showed Paléo that they can still put on a show despite four decades of concerts. Most of all, they seemed to be having lots of fun, and playfully interacted with the crowd. Another fixture of a Maiden concert is obviously the appearance of their zombie mascot, Eddie, here a three meter high giant who came on stage wielding a hatchet and attacking the band before getting his heart dramatically ripped out by Dickinson and thrown into the crowd! Slightly later on, it was an ever larger model of Eddie that appeared at the back of the stage, and a 15 meter high replica of his torso leered over the crowd before disappearing in a blaze of fire-crackers.

As the concert came to an end, Dickinson took it out on the Swiss sound regulations, limiting the decibels for the concert, apologising to the crowd that the music “wasn’t loud enough”, and on the sight of a French flag in the crowd, launched into a touching tirade about the events in Nice and the importance that we are all part of the same humanity, whatever our colour, gender or nationality. Most importantly, “as long as you like Iron Maiden and beer, you’re one of us!” he shouted, before launching into aptly named Blood Brothers. When they had finally left, after throwing wrist bands, drumsticks etc. into the crowd at the end of the concert, it was an exhausted but happy crowd that slowly drifted towards something to eat, a place to sit or maybe just some more music to jump to.

When you do folk covers of metal songs, you get “acoustic mosh pits”

Metal and hard-rock were celebrated in all kinds of ways on Wednesday night, and apart from some more bands playing the genre, from melodic metal band the Raven Age (whose guitarist is the son of Iron Maiden bass player Steve Harris), to Swiss folk metal band Eluveitie, there were two rather special and eccentric bands playing. The first were the crazy bagpipe toting Scots from Red Hot Chili Pipers, who delighted the crowd gathered under the Dôme to hear their covers of rock classics. At the same time (the trick at Paléo is getting to see several concerts taking place at the same time!) on the second open air stage, Steve’n’Seagulls were showcasing their folk covers of metal songs. These two wacky projects, complete with slightly cheesy puns (but they’re the best anyway), were very entertaining, and were enjoyable as much for people less into loud guitars and drums, as well as hardcore fans who loved every song they covered.

The night ended with French rock band Louise Attaque, who have been playing for the last 20 years, and hadn’t come back to Paléo in a few years. Starting half an hour late, Gaetan Roussel welcomed the crowd with a “we haven’t seen you in a long time, it’s good to be back”, before starting with an old classic. They mixed new songs with their older hits, bringing back memories from quite a lot of people’s youth, and getting everyone to sing along. The area in front of the main stage seemed packed again, which means that a lot of the people jumping up and down to the savage guitar of Iron Maiden came back for the signature violin of Louise Attaque’s songs. Long live musical diversity!