Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Gradisca d'Isonzo (Gorizia) / Slot Bar Prestige / Italy
Concert date: 03/18/2014
Attendance: 130
Ticket price: €0.00 (free admission)
Blaze Bayley isn’t just a familiar face to us, we can pretty much call him an old friend. Ever since 1995, when the famous Iron Maiden album »The X Factor« came out, for some forever cursed, for others a fantastic record from this renowned and in many ways pioneering metal band of the British Isles.
Days go by, years go by. Silently. And Blaze Bayley has been at it for quite a while now as a solo act, swapping out his »employees« faster than trees shed their leaves. After the sorry effort »The King Of Metal« (2012), awkwardly titled in this regard and lacking the virtues of its predecessors »Promise And Terror« and »Man Who Would Not Die«, the man hit thirty years in music last year. He spent the first decade with Wolfsbane, then five years with Iron Maiden, and then formed Blaze, which catapulted him into a solo career. However you look at it, and no matter how much sympathy you have for the guy, the undeniable fact remains that he’s been condemned for quite some time to the curse of smaller club gigs and sometimes to real physical and mental exhaustion, as he keeps grinding away on endless tours stretched across the globe. He has obviously made peace with that. He took everything into his own hands. From selling official merch to his albums, which he releases on his own label. He’s his own boss. Lots of gigs, less and less money from them. So all that’s left is selling souvenirs. You feel so sorry for the man, watching him sit there before the show at the edge of the merch table, that even the »long haul« of his studio output starts to feel like original sin.
After the far from convincing »The King Of Metal«, which he promoted in 2012 with stops in Ljubljana and Maribor as well, last year he put out a double »best of« compilation titled »Soundtracks Of My Life«. A move that, right now, is more than welcome for Bayley! Besides two brand-new studio tracks (Hatred, Eating Children), of which Blaze picked Eating Children for the live repertoire of the new tour, it’s stacked with the creative peaks of his musical career, which guarantees a good setlist on the current tour.
That’s how it went this evening, too, in the Italian town of Gradisca d’Isonzo, a stone’s throw from old Gorizia. Free entry, a club scene with a cozy setting that fits some 150 people. The place was packed to the rafters. For this tour Blaze put together a new backing crew, who otherwise belong to the band Absolva! The musicians backing him on stage on the current tour are Chris Appleton (guitar), Dan Bate (bass) and Martin McNee (drums). Of the three, Appleton has worked with Bayley before, and some of you might know the guy from the Iced Earth »Dystopia« tour that rolled through Europe in 2011. Back then Chris Appleton, as the singer and guitarist of the support act Fury UK, opened the shows for Iced Earth. And because it’s a small world, his brother Luke, who played bass for Fury UK at the time, later became a full-fledged member of Iced Earth, where he still plucks the very same instrument today.
Blaze remains charisma from head to toe. Right off the bat he got the crowd on its feet and soaring with classics from the Blaze era! He kicked off with The Launch, Speed Of Light and The Brave, which hit one after another, and then the Iron Maiden number Futureal (»Virtual XI«, 1998) quickly joined in. The sound was excellent from the first moment to the last. The room’s acoustics were no less so. The trio of backing musicians did a great job and showed they’re made of the right stuff when you put them on the front line. Especially Appleton, who masterfully filled the whole room with just a single guitar (a Gibson SG). Blaze with that signature hollow, dark vocal! You can’t miss it. It’s one of a kind. Once again we weren’t spared the famous rallying speeches, with which Bayley turned the point of »his great fight for the right cause« into the realm of children’s fairy tales, which you can’t decide whether to believe or just laugh at. Whatever. Either way, those speeches fire you up. Sometimes you just wish you had the rhetorical skills Bayley has in the pinky of his left hand. But he did get the crowd howling with laughter once. During the long speeches he didn’t forget the obligatory thank-yous in the usual manner, along the lines of »….to each and everyone who came to blah, blah, blah,…«. Among other things, he thanked the crowd for buying tickets for tonight’s show, not realizing that admission was free. Waves of laughter in the room! The straw that broke the camel’s back. Or one thank-you too many.
That said, you can tell Blaze Bayley is no longer at the age where he bursts with surplus adrenaline and speed. A few times he was gasping for air, which meant his voice got »swallowed up« in some parts of the songs. You’ve got to cut him some slack here, since he was exposed the whole time to the merciless, scorching glare of stage lights just a yard or two from the heads of the four guys on stage. Still, Blaze (especially in the closing stretch) won over absolutely everyone in the club once the crew tore into the long-awaited Iron Maiden epic Clansman. The man saved a lovely surprise for the final stretch, firing off a Wolfsbane cover (Tough As) Steel, followed, as expected, by a third Iron Maiden song, Man on the Edge, which closed the regular part of the set. The repertoire also included the following songs: Leap Of Faith, Eating Chidlren, Robot, Samurai, Ghost In The Machine, Kill And Destroy, Stare At The Sun, Soundtrack Of My Life, Silicon Mesiah and The King Of Metal.
And one more song for the encore. Blood And Belief! With a fresh introductory speech he stoked the crowd once more and riled them up one last time, the way only he can, squeezing the last dozen atoms out of a thoroughly sweaty, soaked audience, who got a real, proper metal slap right in the forehead!
A beautiful concert evening dedicated to the magic of heavy metal came to an end, and there wasn’t a soul who complained about anything. You got in for free and had plenty to see and enjoy. Blaze Bayley is announcing a new studio album. Let’s hope this tour fills him with fresh creative inspiration to fix the sorry impression left by his last studio record, and in the meantime we’ll happily spin the greatest moments of his career, brilliantly summed up by his current release »Soundtracks Of My Life«.
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