HISTORY OF IRON MAIDEN: MAIDEN ENGLAND (2012 - 2014)

 2012–2014: Maiden England

At the beginning of 2012, intensive preparations began for another historic concert tour, which ultimately lasted for the next three years. On February 18, 2012, the group announced further concerts. This time, over 30 performances planned for June - August were to cover only North America, including many amphitheatres and festivals.
The "Maiden England World Tour 2012/13" promoted the group's next (the third one) retrospective DVD, History Of Iron Maiden Part III: Maiden England. Dozens of concerts have been booked for 2013 in other parts of the world, including: in South America, where Iron Maiden headlined the Rock In Rio festival in Brazil for the third time in their career.

Over 90,000 tickets for this concert were sold in less than two hours, eventually the band played to well over 100,000 people gathered at the festival site.

The group even organized its own metal festival, "Battle of San Bernardino 2013", which was attended by approximately 45,000 people from the region. The setting of the concerts was designed to reflect the gigantic stage production from 1988, when Iron Maiden promoted the legendary album Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1988).
According to many eyewitnesses, the concert production at that time was one of the most spectacular in the group's history. Concerts played in North America turned out to be an artistic and commercial success bigger than ever.

Management announced that in the summer of 2013 the group would go on a tour of the Old Continent, giving a record-breaking, fifth show in their career as the headliner of Download Festival 2013 in Donington Park in front of approximately 120,000 people.
Then, vinyl re-editions of the band's eight classic albums were announced in the exclusive PLP Heavy Weight Vinyl version. Over the following months, a number of stadium and festival concerts were announced in individual European countries.

Iron Maiden became the first rock band to perform at Friends Arena, Stockholm's new sports stadium, selling over 53,000 tickets within 45 minutes. For July 2013, the band has booked two concerts in the largest arenas in Poland. The Atlas Arena in Łódź was booked for July 3, and a day later Iron Maiden were to visit the Ergo Arena in Gdańsk. The musicians visited these cities for the last time in September 1986 during the "Somewhere on Tour 1986/1987". Due to the success of the eighty concerts of the "Maiden England 2012/2013" tour so far, which attracted a total of over 2.2 million people - the band's management decided to extend the tour in 2014 with another 20 performances at the largest festivals and in selected arenas and stadiums in Europe and UK.

The third ever Iron Maiden concert in Poznań took place on June 24, 2014 at the Poznań INEA Stadium. The spectacle was preceded by performances of the Swedish heavy rock band Ghost and the American thrash metal legend - Slayer. The band was the headliner of the most prestigious festivals, including: Bravalla Festival, Rock Im Park / Rock Am Ring (200,000 people for two shows combined), Hellfest (100,000 people from all over the Europe in attendance just for Iron Maiden spectacle), Main Square Arras, Nova Rock Festival or Forta Rock Festival. The band has  broken all previous attendance records many times.

The last concert of the tour was a performance in front of 65,000 people as the headliner of the Sonisphere Festival, in England's Knebworth Park. In 2013-2014, the sextet gave seven stadium and festival concerts in Scandinavia, gathering a total of 280,000 fans. This was another confirmation of the group's dominant position in the region. To sum up, the 101 concerts of the "Maiden England World Tour 2012–2014" ultimately attracted approximately 3.1 million people in 32 countries in North and South America and the Old Continent, which made the tour the most spectacular and best received since the formation of the six-person lineup in February of 1999. 

 

Another record in the history of the formation's routes was also broken. According to Live Nation Scandinavia, 104 concerts played in Scandinavia between 1980 and 2014 were seen by over 2.5 million concert goers (10.3% of the population), which was further confirmation of the group's dominant position in the region.
At the beginning of October 2014, collector's reissues of the group's first eight classic albums and the accompanying seven-inch singles, released on high-quality vinyl (180 g), appeared on the publishing market. 

 

The sound was recreated from the original master tapes and remastered at Abbey Road Studios in London, achieving the highest audiophile fidelity to the original.
The original graphic design of the cover illustrations was also recreated so that it immortalized the work of Derek Riggs, the band's legendary graphic designer, as faithfully as possible.

In September, the group started working on their sixteenth studio album. The process of recording the material was initiated in Paris, with the assistance of Maiden's full-time producer, Kevin Shirley. The recording of the album was completed in mid-December, as the producer announced via his personal Facebook profile.
This time it was to be a very special studio effort, it could have been the last in the career of the British heavy metal veterans.