BLAZE BAYLEY – War Within Me (2021)
It happens to me every time when I listen to a new BLAZE BAYLEY song; it takes me back to the very early ’80s when I heard the first IRON MAIDEN album. It wasn’t different with his new album ”War Within Me”.
A startling 21 years have passed since Blaze Bayley released his first solo record, but perhaps more importantly, it is 13 years since he released the first to bear his full name, but also a record that loudly rewrote Blaze’s musical manifesto, pushing him ever further into epic, red-blooded classic metal.
Since that point, he has been on excellent form, as showcased via the criminally overlooked trio of “Infinite Entanglement” albums, which climaxed with 2018’s “The Redemption of William Black”.
Three years on, “War Within Me” will doubtless be widely reviewed with endless allusions to its creator’s dogged persistence and perennial underdog status as a backdrop. But really this is a heroic and supremely confident traditional metal record, and BLAZE has never sounded more confident or fired up…