Blaze Bayley, good or bad?

Which was the better album; The X-Factor or Virtual XI

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My observation is that Blaze was unfairly panned for not being Bruce - stepping into the place of someone who had been incredibly popular is always going to be hard work at the best of times. I think he had (and still does have) a great voice but ultimately just didn't have the right personality to be Maiden's frontman.
 
Loved him in Wolfsbane, and if he could have brought more of the stage charisma and humour with him to Maiden he may have done better. Seemed like he was overawed and played it too 'straight'. Nothing could save him from not having the vocal stamina to survive the touring though.

But, to get a bit closer to answering the question, I love his voice on both the Maiden albums, it suited that period perfectly IMO.

And, to actually (sort of) answer the question... Both albums are as OK as each other, both better than the two that went before, and not as good as any of the others.
 
Blaze was good, but he's not Bruce.
Virtual XI had some good moments, X Factor was excellent.

My opinion, but I think also the consensus of this forum in the time I've been here.
 
RTC said:
To be serious, I think both are about level, but Virtual XI is a lot more to the point while X Factor can get very boring at times.
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Scratch this. X Factor has more songs that get a B and beyond (Man On The Edge, Edge Of Darkness, Blood On The World's Hands and Sign vs Futureal and Clansman), but X Factor has a lot of mediocre boring songs whereas Virtual just has one awful one. The run-time on X-Factor is a little unreasonable also.

Honestly, they alternate with one another depending on my mood.
 
IIRC, my least favourites are 2AM, The Unbeliever and Truth.

And it was Lord Of The Flies, not Man On The Edge :/.
 
While I do really like both of his albums with Maiden, Blaze was just the wrong guy for the job, but the blame happens to fall on Steve. It should have been clear that his range was nowhere near up to the task of handling most Bruce era songs they threw at him, especially for a prolonged tour (which both tours were). It wouldn't have been as much of a problem if they'd have tuned down the songs to accommodate his lower range, but Blaze (in his old biography) and more recently Janick have both said that doing that should have been done, but obviously wasn't.

That said, I'm still a big fan of his, and much of his solo stuff (his first four, in particular) are really worth checking out. I saw him in 2011 and, big surprise, singing songs within his range makes a TON of difference. He sounded brilliant.
 
Hey, me too Ariana. I was the same age as you...It was also the first Maiden studio album I bought.So I was really loving the album!

But I think, in hindsight, many of the real themes of the lyrics and such were lost on me at that age....It didn't occur to me until much later how clever they were. I just thought the music was good.
 
Probably. I guess I missed that because I used to play it quite regularly and the themes must have become clear gradually.
 
Well, lyrically it isn't really an album suited for 14-16 year olds, with many of the lyrics dealing about family, war, isolation, jobs, loneliness, religion etc...

It's a very "real" album in that sense, it deals with reality and when you're 12-16 or whatever you're still not quite out of childhood yet ;)
 
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