I saw as many cops over the weekend of the Heavy Mtl. festival as I usually spot in an entire year. As we were departing Metal Island via the metro we stumbled across a group of cops who were separating the metal heads from the general populace, herding the innocent bystanders into a cordoned area behind police tape and away from the Maiden fans.

I’m off to beautiful Montreal this weekend with my MMR compadres for our first ever outdoor metal festival, Heavy Mtl (Warning: Link may contain too much metal for one hand).

Attending a metal fest has been a dream of ours since we were children. I’m at least as excited by the notion of being surrounded by tens of thousands of metalheads on Metal Island as I am for the bands themselves.

“If you hate Tolkien, but you love Frank Frazetta heavy metal album covers, this is the Thor for you.” - Matt Fraction

Iron Maiden’s revival of their Powerslave set-up on their Somewhere Back In Time tour brought back all sorts of odd memories for me.

I was first introduced to Iron Maiden’s mascot, Eddie, while in elementary school. I still have my denim jacket from the sixth grade with the Killers patch sewed onto the back. This version of Eddie was portrayed as a small-time hood, wandering the streets of London with a bloody axe in hand. For the longest time it was the only variation I was accustomed to.

It was my familiarity with early Eddie that made his regal appearance on the album cover for Powerslave so shocking to me. It proved that Eddie had a history which stretched back further than what I had already been exposed to. He wasn’t just tied down to one time or place. There was a kind of continuity there. A secret history.

Even more than the difference in eras, the disparity in status between these conceptions of Eddie threw me off. How did a lowly thug become a tyrant? Was that even possible? I found the notion terrifying. The idea that some petty monster, the kind I was already used to dealing with in my own neighbourhood, had the potential to rise to power and lord it over everyone was an unwelcome revelation.