Writing for Al Jazeera, Mark LeVine explores the uncanny popularity of dinosaur metal band Iron Maiden amongst a young, Middle Eastern fan base and “asks if heavy metal music offers a blueprint for modernization in the Middle East.” I certainly hope LeVine’s geopolitical thesis is correct — reconfiguring staid Mideast nations using the tenets of Maiden as a basis sounds brilliant, for the resultant national flags alone.
I first saw Iron Maiden in Dubai in 2007, at the Dubai Desert Rock Festival, which although only three years old was becoming known as the “Mecca for Middle Eastern metal”.
This was pre-crash Dubai, in all its excessive splendor, and the festival was filled to capacity with 20,000 metalheads, mostly Arabs, Iranians and South Asians, cheering, screaming and even crying during Maiden’s headlining show.
The members of Iron Maiden still recall that first Dubai show fondly, but in reality Dubai represented the very antithesis of everything Maiden has always stood for – consumption without reason, style over substance, the pursuit of wealth and celebrity without a solid foundation or sustainable principles.
