LIVE REVIEW: IRON MAIDEN – RUN FOR YOUR LIVES TOUR WITH MEGADETH @ TRULIANT AMPHITHEATER, CHARLOTTE, NC – SEPTEMBER 12, 2026

A 50th anniversary tour can easily turn into a museum piece. Iron Maiden had no interest in that Saturday night.

When the Run For Your Lives World Tour reached Charlotte’s Truliant Amphitheater on September 12, Maiden looked back across five decades without ever feeling stuck there. The tour was built specifically around material from the band’s first nine albums, giving longtime fans a set packed with songs that helped define Iron Maiden while bringing several deeper cuts back into the spotlight.

The show was sold out, and from the stage the size of the crowd was hard to ignore. Looking back across Truliant Amphitheater, I honestly cannot remember seeing that many people packed into an amphitheater. Every section including the lawn was completely packed full, and even with the rain coming down, the crowd never lost any of its energy.

And because apparently celebrating 50 years of Iron Maiden was not enough metal for one evening, Megadeth came along for the ride.

The weather had already started turning by the time Megadeth hit the stage shortly after 7 p.m. Rain moved across the amphitheater as Dave Mustaine and company launched straight into “Wake Up Dead,” but nobody onstage appeared interested in easing into the night.

Their 55-minute set was lean and built almost entirely around the songs people came to hear. “Hangar 18” gave guitarists Teemu Mäntysaari and Mustaine plenty of room to trade leads, while James LoMenzo and Dirk Verbeuren kept the rhythm section moving underneath them.

“Sweating Bullets” brought one of the set’s most recognizable openings before Megadeth reached further back with “Poison Was the Cure.” Both that song and “In My Darkest Hour” made their tour debuts in Charlotte, giving the set a little more weight than a standard greatest-hits support slot.

The newer “Let There Be Shred” fit exactly where its title suggested it would, before “Tornado of Souls” turned the focus back toward *Rust in Peace*. From there, Megadeth closed with an especially strong three-song run of “Symphony of Destruction,” “Peace Sells” and “Holy Wars… The Punishment Due.”

There was very little wasted time. Ten songs, plenty of guitar work and a set that felt much closer to a condensed Megadeth headline show than a typical opening performance.

Then it was Maiden’s turn.

Just before 8:40, the giant screen behind the stage began moving through the streets and pubs of London, pulling the production back toward the world where Iron Maiden began. UFO’s “Doctor Doctor” gave way to “The Ides of March,” and when the band finally appeared, they went all the way back to 1981 with “Murders in the Rue Morgue.”

It immediately established what this tour was going to be.

Rather than opening with one of the obvious arena-sized singles, Maiden stacked the first four songs with “Murders in the Rue Morgue,” “Wrathchild,” “Killers” and “Phantom of the Opera.” For fans who have followed the band for decades, that opening stretch alone was worth paying attention to.

Bruce Dickinson was everywhere.

One minute he was planted at center stage working the crowd, the next he was running across the risers or disappearing into another part of the production. There has always been a theatrical element to Dickinson as a frontman, and the Run For Your Lives show gives him more than enough material to work with. These songs are full of battles, executions, ancient civilizations, monsters and doomed sailors. Maiden did not simply put images behind them. They built the stage around those stories.

“The Number of the Beast” finally brought the first massive singalong of the Maiden set, surrounded by flames and the kind of production that has become inseparable from the band’s live identity.

But one of the real strengths of this anniversary set was what happened between the obvious hits.

“Infinite Dreams,” pulled from 1988’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, returned as one of those songs longtime Maiden fans may not have expected to hear again. Then came a run through Powerslave that became one of the strongest sections of the entire night.

“Powerslave” transformed the stage into ancient Egypt while Dickinson leaned completely into the character of the song. “2 Minutes to Midnight” followed before the band stretched out with “Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

That is where the scale of this production really became clear.

The massive screens turned the stage into a ship at sea as Maiden worked through the nearly 14-minute epic. The song was allowed to breathe, moving from its galloping opening into the quieter middle passage before building its way back out again. It is a lot to ask from an amphitheater crowd in 2026, especially in a set loaded with much shorter classics. Maiden never treated that length as a problem. They made it one of the centerpieces of the show.

Steve Harris remained the engine underneath all of it. His bass was high in the mix, driving those familiar gallops while Dave Murray, Adrian Smith and Janick Gers continued to show why Maiden’s three-guitar lineup works so well. Each guitarist brings something different, but the songs never felt crowded.

Gers in particular never seems capable of standing still for very long, while Smith and Murray let their playing do most of the talking. When all three locked together with Harris, the music still carried that unmistakable Maiden sound.

Behind them was Simon Dawson, who joined Iron Maiden on the road following Nicko McBrain’s retirement from touring at the end of 2024. This anniversary run is Maiden’s first without McBrain behind the kit in more than four decades, which could have been a major adjustment. Instead, Dawson kept the songs tight without trying to force himself into them.

Then the show started unloading the classics.

“Run to the Hills” was followed by the long, atmospheric “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son,” before Dickinson reappeared in military dress carrying the Union Jack for “The Trooper.”

By this point the rain had become part of the night. It came down heavily around the uncovered portions of Truliant while Maiden continued without interruption. Dickinson even acknowledged what was happening beyond the stage, turning a miserable weather forecast into something the crowd could laugh about rather than complain about.

“Hallowed Be Thy Name” brought another of the production’s best theatrical moments, with Dickinson performing part of the song from behind bars as the stage took on the imagery of a prisoner facing execution. It was followed by “Iron Maiden,” complete with another appearance from Eddie and enough fire to briefly make everyone forget they were standing in the rain.

After a short break, Winston Churchill’s speech introduced “Aces High.”

Dickinson returned dressed for the occasion as Maiden tore through one of the fastest songs of the night. “Fear of the Dark” followed, and the familiar crowd chant that begins before the first verse turned Truliant into one enormous choir.

That left “Wasted Years.”

It was an interesting choice to close the night. Maiden could have ended with something heavier or something bigger from a production standpoint. Instead, “Wasted Years” gave the show something warmer. After two hours spent digging through the band’s past, a song built around not wasting the time in front of you suddenly made a lot of sense.

Iron Maiden has been celebrating its history for much of the Run For Your Lives tour, but Charlotte never felt like a band simply replaying it.

This was still loud. Still theatrical. Still fast when it needed to be. Eddie still showed up carrying weapons. Dickinson still ran from one end of the stage to the other. Harris still planted his foot on the monitors and aimed his bass toward the crowd. And 50 years after Steve Harris formed the band in East London, those songs still sounded like they belonged on a stage this big, and they could still melt your face off.

The timing makes the celebration even more fitting. Iron Maiden will also enter the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as part of its 2026 class.

Charlotte got the rain-soaked version of the party.

Nobody seemed to mind.

Iron Maiden Photo Gallery

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Megadeth Photo Gallery

Setlist

• Doctor Doctor (From Tape)
• The Ides of March (From Tape)
• Murders in the Rue Morgue
• Wrathchild
• Killers
• Phantom of the Opera
• The Number of the Beast
• Infinite Dreams
• Powerslave
• 2 Minutes to Midnight
• Rime of the Ancient Mariner
• Run to the Hills
• Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
• The Trooper
• Hallowed Be Thy Name
• Iron Maiden
• Churchill’s Speech (From Tape)
• Encore: Aces High
• Encore: Fear of the Dark
• Encore: Wasted Years
• Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (From Tape)

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Live photography by Chris Collett for No Flash Needed. © 2026 No Flash Needed. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without written permission.