IRON MAIDEN - 'Flight 666'
21.03.2009, 'Arena Cinema', Sofia - BulgariaВ 

words by: Stefan Yordanov, photo:В  Stefan Yordanov.

'Arena' theatre is not your usual place to see hundreds of people in Iron Maiden t-shirts. Well, yesterday, on April 21st 2009 that really happened. All the chavs and chalga girls from the suburban Sofia who use to go to 'Arena' just to hang out there were shocked to withess how myriad of cars with stickers like ‘Up The Irons’, ‘Maiden Bulgaria’, ‘Iron Maiden’ and ‘666’ suddenly blocked every single place on the parking lot beside the theatre.

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The reason for this gathering of metalheads was the Maiden Day, celebrated in cinemas worldwide with the premiere screening of the movie 'Flight 666'. All the normal people disappeared around 7 PM. There was a big bunch of organized Maiden fans in fron of the theatre which could be mistaken for a football hooligan gang from a distance. The tension and the excitement was building with every minute. But Maiden fans always can find a good topic for discussion- some of them were talking about the forthcoming new album, while others were dicussing the DVD release in May and showing up pictures of their new collectible items. Hall 13 has not enough seats for all of us, so the management of the theatre strated selling tickets for one more hall.

It starts to rain a little bit, which, I must say, is quite annoying, so we all decide to go in. There's a long queue of fans. Eddie is popping his ugly head from practically everywhere- t-shirts, patches, badges, jackets and hats.В  No mistake here, everybody is in the right place. Let me tell you something, a cinema full of 500 metalheads is not a thing you can witness every day. The thing that happened a few sends after the lights went off is hard to describe.
25 years after I first listened to an Iron maiden's album I was at the local cinema and warching them on a movie. Wow! The wonderful sound was doubled with the roar of the fans inside the hall 13. It was a constant rambling, screaming and singing along during the film. hard to describe, really. The rest of it? All the credits for the rest should be given to Sam Dunn and Scott Mc Fayden from  ‘Banger Productions’.

They proved their genius twice so far ('Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey' и 'Global Metal'),  and they can surely do documentaries about metal without the usual dryness of the artists' ordinary mambligs-jamblings.You need a certain amount of talent to make a movie like ‘Flight 666’. First, because it's 2 hours, totally dedicated to the band-fans connection. I suppose it's not so easy to capture this and especially to find characters like Father Iron Maiden, who has 162 Maiden tattoos, bases his sermons on Maiden lyrics and has even christened his son Steve Harris. It needs balls and luck to capture the two shagging dogs on the streets on Mexico while the Maiden bus was literlly besieged with fans. And this little Japanes girl who claims to become the daughter of Steve Harris... Amazing! You have to see these things to believe them. 45 days gathered in only 2 hours. But as Dickinson says 'It eas our chance to do so many concerts in so short period of time- bam, bam, bam, bam. Here it is, out magic carpet.' I can not re-tell the movie and do not have the desire of doing it, but would like to finish this with the Janick's words: 'If you like our music, God Bless you, but id you don't like it, you know what? God bless you too!'
A large gang of fans went to The Black Lodge metal bar after the screening to take part in the special ‘Flight 666’ after party. Lots of beer and more Iron Maiden. There my memories stopped recording themselves in my brain, I beg you to excuse me.