Blaze Bayley

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Jer said:
...and that no one notified him about the Silicon Messiah vinyl reissue in time for him to secure one. That seems pretty bizarre and messed up to me. Also removing all the band photos from the booklet. Geez. The guy co-wrote the bulk of these songs.
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It looks as if the LP has been made to look like a Blaze Bayley release. Damnatio memoriae?
 
The Silicon Messiah vinyl released in 2015 kept all the original photos though, including Andy Sneap working in the studio and Blaze with "Bröderna Hårdrock"/ the Nifelheim guys on the Virtual XI tour in Stockholm 1998. I liked that.
 
I think there'll be some cheesy stuff in there - "Warrior", "Pull Yourself Up", sounds like stuff we've heard from him before - but some of those titles are rather intriguing. What significance is the number "303"? Does it refer to the year? A military squadron? A fictional spacecraft? What are the "18 Flights"? I'm guessing that "Witches Night" won't be very deep, but I hope it'll be suitably fiery. And yeah, those three scientist songs are very interesting, but not an absurd leap since Blaze seems to have gotten deeper into science during the last album. I hope they'll be suitably epic. Same with the last track on the album.

The Bayley / Applegate match gave us three strong albums before and I really hope they go even beyond with this one.
 
Blaze has posted the chorus of The Power of Nikola Tesla a teaser:

Shout, Nikola Tesla's name
A citizen of three countries knows the game
Keeps their echo from the past
Rise from beyond your grave
Son of Serbia and a hermit virgin
May you rest in peace at last
Nikola Milutin Tesla
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Night Prowler said:
Blaze has posted the chorus of The Power of Nikola Tesla a teaser:

Shout, Nikola Tesla's name
A citizen of three countries knows the game
Keeps their echo from the past
Rise from beyond your grave
Son of Serbia and a hermit virgin
May you rest in peace at last
Nikola Milutin Tesla
maxresdefault.jpg
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April 1 has come early.
 
Found some pictures which I saved down from the web a while ago, of the Blood and Belief tour in 2004. Steve Wray was the last original member to tour with BLAZE that year (John Slater played on the album though, but decided to not go on tour).

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And a little piece of BLAZE history which I found a while ago:

Steve Wray Q:A Session which he did on the planetblaze website just after leaving the band in September 2004.
Quite interesting to get to read his perspective on things, including the beginning with Sanctuary.
It got harder when Rob left too and then when John looked like quitting I decided that was the final straw. Don’t get me wrong though, I’m not trying to devalue anything that was done between Jeff quitting and now, I still gave 110% and never stopped believing until the very end. And as I say, "Blood & Beleif" couldn't have been named more appropriatley!

I did enjoy the last couple of tours with Blaze but I started to see that I personally had hit a brick wall with the band and couldn’t really see where it was going anymore.

It is hard for me playing a gig to a few people, especially when you don’t agree with the business decisions (out of your control) that may have lead you to that point. - Steve Wray
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Q:What are the chances of you coming back to Blaze at some point?

A:I’ll never say never again, I’m extremely proud of all the stuff we did. When I left I told Neil and Bayley that I wouldn’t rule out working together again at some point. I enjoy writing and recording with Bayley very much. - Steve Wray.
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As a matter of interest, do you think Sanctuary were squashing Blaze? I've only heard bits and pieces about that.
Good luck for the future - you've got a hell of a lot of talent (as have John and Jeff)

A:Cheers, I don’t really know that much about the Sanctuary situation if I’m honest. I do know that there management style for a smaller band is the exact polar opposite of the one that Bayley wanted. I.e.: Blaze wants to live on a tour bus and sell records the good old fashioned way, where as a company like sanctuary look at everything like a business transaction. In true Derek Smalls style I rest somewhere between the two ethos!

I don’t honestly know if Sanctuary intentionally squashed us at the start of if they just had bigger fish to fry, sorry I can't really help with that. - Steve Wray.
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The idea that management would deliberately squash Blaze's solo career is a bizarre conspiracy theory. Sanctuary were huge at that time, they had signed Beyonce FFS! The idea that Rod would be scheming to destroy Blaze is laughable, even on just thinking about what would his motive be for ruining the career of one of his own artists. Rod's many things but he's not Sharon Osbourne:lol:
 
srfc said:
The idea that management would deliberately squash Blaze's solo career is a bizarre conspiracy theory. Sanctuary were huge at that time, they had signed Beyonce FFS! The idea that Rod would be scheming to destroy Blaze is laughable, even on just thinking about what would his motive be for ruining the career of one of his own artists. Rod's many things but he's not Sharon Osbourne:lol:
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No, but the Sanctuary decision to release Silicon Messiah 1 week before Brave New World was an example of a marvelous miscalculation at best, mismanagement at worst.
 
Yax said:
No, but the Sanctuary decision to release Silicon Messiah 1 week before Brave New World was an example of a marvelous miscalculation at best, mismanagement at worst.
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I don't agree with that, it got some publicity around then because it was out at the same time as BNW that it would never have got if they had released it on a random week. It got included in with Maiden's PR where it would have been given a two line review in Kerrang had it been released any other time and especially if he had not been managed by someone with the weight of Rod. It got a review as good as BNW if I recall correctly.

Blaze was a failure in Maiden, Maiden themselves where failures in the eyes of the metal press in the 90's, there wasn't a public waiting with bated breath to see what Blaze would do next after Maiden, blaming Rod that Silicon Messiah didn't do great is an easy crutch, but if people take a step back, SM did way better than it should have done. Just that it was a quality album does not guarantee anyone was going to listen to it, FFS BNW itself had no guarantee that it was going to be a success.
 
Rod never managed Blaze directly though. It was an unknown guy. Blaze also said that Rod and Andy Taylor had nothing to do with the issue.
 
I see your point - However - The argument that has been made over the years is that joining the releases with eachother overshadowed SM, whereas if it had been released say a month earlier or whatever, it could have generated a much bigger impact (this is assuming Sanctuary had pushed it properly in this instance too). As it was, everybody was taken by the reunion itself.

I've always believed that the best chance for Blaze to have a prosperous solo career would have been if he had gotten a couple of support slots for Maiden, as they cater to the same fanbase.
 
I think another issue is that SPV was a shit label and couldn't get the album channeled out properly. No other label wanted to give him a record deal either, something he mentions in the re-issue of Silicon Messiah.
 
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