How IRON MAIDEN's 'The Book Of Souls' Stage Gets Built (Video)

British heavy metal legends IRON MAIDEN have uploaded a two-minute video in which "Mayan temple expert and Killer Krew member" Ashley Groom explains how the band's "The Book Of Souls" stage set gets built.

IRON MAIDEN guitarist Adrian Smith recently told David "Devo" Oosthuizen of South Africa's The Blacklist about the band's current setlist: "It's a balance [between the new album and the classic songs]. The thing is, with the Internet now, as soon as you play one show, everyone knows the setlist. Because the show is so theatrical, there's a lot of cues in it, so it's not like we just get up there and play and change songs every night. It's a coordinated show, so we [aren't] changing much. It's a good balance of [the classic tracks and] our favorite of the new songs, from the new album, 'cause we wanna promote the new album, 'cause we're very proud of it. As a band, as musicians, we like to be moving forward and be creative. That’s always been the biggest buzz for me."

Asked if it is ever frustrating that the fans expect MAIDEN to keep playing songs the band wrote decades ago when MAIDEN has released so many other albums since then, singer Bruce Dickinson told Noisey: "I don't mind, because the new record's really good; it stands up a hundred percent on its own. To an extent, we can always tweak the set list. We'll see how the new record goes down, we'll get some ideas from fans, what they think about it, what tracks they super super love, what tracks they'd really like to see. But I think that there's three or four, maybe five, songs off the new album which would be terrific to play live. And that's half the album, you know? That's 45 minutes!"

Regarding whether there are any songs he would never want to play live, Dickinson said: "Ah, no, it's not that there are songs that we don't necessarily like, but the one that would be the biggest problem in the context of a regular IRON MAIDEN show would certainly be 'Empire Of The Clouds', because it would be so different. On the other hand, it could be really, really cool to perhaps do it in a different context, just because it is so different, you know? Just do something special for it, but that special thing might not even be MAIDEN, you know? It could be that you just do a special event based around it. I don't know though, that's all speculation."

IRON MAIDEN's world tour, in support of the band's latest album, "The Book Of Souls", kicked off on February 24 in Sunrise, Florida (a suburb of Fort Lauderdale).