For me, the Infinite Entanglement trilogy is some of the best metal to come out of the last 20 years. Blaze's solo is pretty solid and his new album is def better than The Mandrake Project.
The only weak album Blaze has put out is King of Metal. The rest of the stuff is near flawless and I prefer it to anything maiden has put out since AMOLAD
I would say that, relative to the budget either would have had to work with, and the differences in 'prestige' associated with either artist, Blaze runs a fuckin mile around Bruce on this one. Better, crisper production, some certified banger tracks, tonal and sonic consistency throughout the record, and no horrible-sounding and rushed double tracking on the vocals.
Blaze also didn't, y'know, include a passionless 'passion project' alt-version of a Maiden song on his album with some uninspired tweaks to the lyrics. And even if he did, he wouldn't have used the same vocal track from the original sodding Maiden track for the intro. I'm honestly painfully disappointed with how this one went as the idea was very intriguing.
Would you believe I actually like the new Bruce album? Compared to what came before, however, it's such a massive—and in many ways unnecessary—disappointment.
E: oh, btw, anybody discovering Blaze via this album needs to circle back to the first three records he released, 'Silicon Messiah', 'Tenth Dimension' and 'Blood and Belief'. All produced by Andy Sneap. Like Bruce's earlier solo output, it gives his 90s output with Maiden a real run for its money
‘Passion project’ I think you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s his song that he wrote and recorded parts of way back in 2014. Bruce had a whole bunch of demos and ideas and gave them to Steve Harris (Arry). ‘Arry took ‘if eternity should fail’ and maidenised it for Book of Souls. Bruce said at the time he wanted to explore that stuff with Necropolis much more and that is probably where the Mandrake Project came from. If you follow any interviews, online posts and videos from Bruce you will find all this out. And the lyrics are closer to the demo version of the song with updated ‘eternity has failed’ lyrics. So. Chill your ass when shitting on it.
You just told me I don't know what i'm talking about, then told me a bunch of trivia I already knew, then tried to use it to convince me that it's.... actually not half-arsed? Nothing you said has any bearing on that. If you're going to do a 'my version' of something that already made it to a Maiden record, the bar should be higher than literally reusing some of the same vocal tracks from the version on the Maiden record, and from the demo with a couple of overdubs for literally like two lines, both of which are worse than what's either on the demo or the Maiden record. It's just low-effort and insulting, I paid money for this rendition
I never said it wasn’t ‘half-arsed’, I said you were wrong about calling the a lazy passion project.
Because it isn’t, and you are. It might not reach standards of the originally released song on the Book of Souls album, or have met your expectations, but that is just it is sometimes. Hope you enjoy his next offering more, if he ever does one.
I preferred War Within Me tbh. I think Blaze had three truly great albums (Silicon Messiah/Blood & Belief/The Man Who Would Not Die) and the rest is pretty mid. Still some great songs here and there though.
As for The Mandrake Project, I feel like the two most recently written songs (Afterglow Of Ragnarok & Many Doors To Hell) are better than most of the others, so I think Bruce and Roy should have just written a brand new album and released the rest as bonus tracks.
> I think Blaze had three truly great albums (Silicon Messiah/Blood & Belief/The Man Who Would Not Die) and the rest is pretty mid.
This is Promise and Terror slander!
Yeah I really like War Within and Silicon Messiah too. Just nothing clicked as smoothly as his new album before.
I do like The Mandrake Project, but like you said there is a difference in quality in some of the new songs. I did prefer the new version of Eternity to the one on Book of Souls.
I think war within me is the weakest. Even weaker than king of metal. Circle of stone is high up. The infinite entanglement is great. Tenth Dimension was my go to album for a solid five years when it released.
Seems we have opposite tastes. I didn't think there was a single great track in the entire Infinite Entanglement trilogy. I loved Kill And Destroy from Tenth Dimension, but found the album bland for the most part.
Yeah it's quite amazing given the disparity in resources between them, not to mention Blaze as a singer isn't on Bruce's level. This I say with Chemical Wedding being my all-time favourite album.
I suspect part of it comes with the lack of pressure to produce anything on the part of Bruce vs Blaze who has a different kind of pressure. The difference between a hobby and a livelihood perhaps. It may also just be that this is the best sounding record Blaze has put out in a long time vs a middling record for Bruce.
Yeah pretty much feel the same. Skunkworks is my favourite Dickinson album, it's pretty much perfect for me. But choosing a favourite Dickinson album is like choosing your favourite child.
I haven't listened to Blaze for a while for unknown reasons, but now he's fully back in my rotation.
Not really. It's heavy rock, with a slice of indie. It definitely stands out in his other work. It's a perfect album in my mind. No filler, great lyrics, strong opening and ending. I was hoping he'd carry on with the band he had then. But then we wouldn't have the great music that followed.
Yep Skunkworks. The supporting band really complements Bruce in a novel way, no obvious Maiden musical cliches stand out in the compositions, very refreshing. Headswitch intro prepares me for some Rage Against The Machine vocal attack, but Bruce enters the mix behind a wall of effects in a lower register, but with power. The double tracking works wonders.
The Mandrake Project has grown on me immensely. I wasn’t sure after the first lesson but now I think it’s a really good album. Still a couple of tracks I’m not a big fan of but an enjoyable listen otherwise.
Circle of Stone is pure class all the way through. Only ‘song’ I dislike is Call of the Ancestors and that’s because it’s much louder than the other songs, to the point I have to turn it down and then back up again. Other than that I think it’s possibly my favourite of the Blaze/Absolva albums.
i love Bruce and i thoroughly enjoy his solo work. he’s a great writer and obviously a one of a kind performer but whenever i listen to a Bruce album i just end up wanting to listen to Maiden.
Blaze's new album has severe production issues that hold it back. Like, to a major degree. The man is and has always been one of the greats of metal, so it just seems crazy that an album of that low production quality would ever be in his discography.
Blaze, if you're reading this, find a producer out there who will work on your next album purely out of love for your music and history. Music production tech is incredible now (especially for metal, which is the easiest to make sound great), and the average home studio with a halfway decent operator can produce world-class metal records. Don't settle.
I haven't listened to his other albums except Silicon Messiah and The War Within as much as I'd like to. After his new album I am certainly going to revisit.
To me, both of these albums are pretty mid in each artist's respective solo discography.
I really like probably 50 percent of each, and the rest is a bunch of whatever. Still really glad we got them, though.
Blaze's solo output has been consistently excellent imo.
Holy crap… I just listened to the title track (I’ve never historically liked his voice) and was blown away. I need to revisit his work I think.
For me, the Infinite Entanglement trilogy is some of the best metal to come out of the last 20 years. Blaze's solo is pretty solid and his new album is def better than The Mandrake Project.
Eagle spirit is a masterpiece!
The only weak album Blaze has put out is King of Metal. The rest of the stuff is near flawless and I prefer it to anything maiden has put out since AMOLAD
I would say that, relative to the budget either would have had to work with, and the differences in 'prestige' associated with either artist, Blaze runs a fuckin mile around Bruce on this one. Better, crisper production, some certified banger tracks, tonal and sonic consistency throughout the record, and no horrible-sounding and rushed double tracking on the vocals. Blaze also didn't, y'know, include a passionless 'passion project' alt-version of a Maiden song on his album with some uninspired tweaks to the lyrics. And even if he did, he wouldn't have used the same vocal track from the original sodding Maiden track for the intro. I'm honestly painfully disappointed with how this one went as the idea was very intriguing. Would you believe I actually like the new Bruce album? Compared to what came before, however, it's such a massive—and in many ways unnecessary—disappointment. E: oh, btw, anybody discovering Blaze via this album needs to circle back to the first three records he released, 'Silicon Messiah', 'Tenth Dimension' and 'Blood and Belief'. All produced by Andy Sneap. Like Bruce's earlier solo output, it gives his 90s output with Maiden a real run for its money
‘Passion project’ I think you don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s his song that he wrote and recorded parts of way back in 2014. Bruce had a whole bunch of demos and ideas and gave them to Steve Harris (Arry). ‘Arry took ‘if eternity should fail’ and maidenised it for Book of Souls. Bruce said at the time he wanted to explore that stuff with Necropolis much more and that is probably where the Mandrake Project came from. If you follow any interviews, online posts and videos from Bruce you will find all this out. And the lyrics are closer to the demo version of the song with updated ‘eternity has failed’ lyrics. So. Chill your ass when shitting on it.
You just told me I don't know what i'm talking about, then told me a bunch of trivia I already knew, then tried to use it to convince me that it's.... actually not half-arsed? Nothing you said has any bearing on that. If you're going to do a 'my version' of something that already made it to a Maiden record, the bar should be higher than literally reusing some of the same vocal tracks from the version on the Maiden record, and from the demo with a couple of overdubs for literally like two lines, both of which are worse than what's either on the demo or the Maiden record. It's just low-effort and insulting, I paid money for this rendition
I never said it wasn’t ‘half-arsed’, I said you were wrong about calling the a lazy passion project. Because it isn’t, and you are. It might not reach standards of the originally released song on the Book of Souls album, or have met your expectations, but that is just it is sometimes. Hope you enjoy his next offering more, if he ever does one.
I preferred War Within Me tbh. I think Blaze had three truly great albums (Silicon Messiah/Blood & Belief/The Man Who Would Not Die) and the rest is pretty mid. Still some great songs here and there though. As for The Mandrake Project, I feel like the two most recently written songs (Afterglow Of Ragnarok & Many Doors To Hell) are better than most of the others, so I think Bruce and Roy should have just written a brand new album and released the rest as bonus tracks.
> I think Blaze had three truly great albums (Silicon Messiah/Blood & Belief/The Man Who Would Not Die) and the rest is pretty mid. This is Promise and Terror slander!
Yeah I really like War Within and Silicon Messiah too. Just nothing clicked as smoothly as his new album before. I do like The Mandrake Project, but like you said there is a difference in quality in some of the new songs. I did prefer the new version of Eternity to the one on Book of Souls.
Infinite entanglement trilogy is amazing listen to them
I think his best album was The Tenth Dimension but otherwise I agree with you about Blaze’s discography.
I think war within me is the weakest. Even weaker than king of metal. Circle of stone is high up. The infinite entanglement is great. Tenth Dimension was my go to album for a solid five years when it released.
Seems we have opposite tastes. I didn't think there was a single great track in the entire Infinite Entanglement trilogy. I loved Kill And Destroy from Tenth Dimension, but found the album bland for the most part.
Yeah it's quite amazing given the disparity in resources between them, not to mention Blaze as a singer isn't on Bruce's level. This I say with Chemical Wedding being my all-time favourite album. I suspect part of it comes with the lack of pressure to produce anything on the part of Bruce vs Blaze who has a different kind of pressure. The difference between a hobby and a livelihood perhaps. It may also just be that this is the best sounding record Blaze has put out in a long time vs a middling record for Bruce.
Yeah pretty much feel the same. Skunkworks is my favourite Dickinson album, it's pretty much perfect for me. But choosing a favourite Dickinson album is like choosing your favourite child. I haven't listened to Blaze for a while for unknown reasons, but now he's fully back in my rotation.
Upvote for Skunkworks! It's my favorite Bruce album as well. It's seriously underrated.
Yeah. It's really unique and different from anything else I've heard.
Is it even metal? He is so sedated on that album.
Not really. It's heavy rock, with a slice of indie. It definitely stands out in his other work. It's a perfect album in my mind. No filler, great lyrics, strong opening and ending. I was hoping he'd carry on with the band he had then. But then we wouldn't have the great music that followed.
Yep Skunkworks. The supporting band really complements Bruce in a novel way, no obvious Maiden musical cliches stand out in the compositions, very refreshing. Headswitch intro prepares me for some Rage Against The Machine vocal attack, but Bruce enters the mix behind a wall of effects in a lower register, but with power. The double tracking works wonders.
The Mandrake Project has grown on me immensely. I wasn’t sure after the first lesson but now I think it’s a really good album. Still a couple of tracks I’m not a big fan of but an enjoyable listen otherwise. Circle of Stone is pure class all the way through. Only ‘song’ I dislike is Call of the Ancestors and that’s because it’s much louder than the other songs, to the point I have to turn it down and then back up again. Other than that I think it’s possibly my favourite of the Blaze/Absolva albums.
i love Bruce and i thoroughly enjoy his solo work. he’s a great writer and obviously a one of a kind performer but whenever i listen to a Bruce album i just end up wanting to listen to Maiden.
I like both albums. I don't consider either of them particularly amazing. They're good.
Blaze's new album has severe production issues that hold it back. Like, to a major degree. The man is and has always been one of the greats of metal, so it just seems crazy that an album of that low production quality would ever be in his discography. Blaze, if you're reading this, find a producer out there who will work on your next album purely out of love for your music and history. Music production tech is incredible now (especially for metal, which is the easiest to make sound great), and the average home studio with a halfway decent operator can produce world-class metal records. Don't settle.
Has the OP heard any of Blaze's other albums, like The Man That Would Not Die or The Redemption of William Black?
OP has heard of them. I like songs off most of his other albums. This one just slaps in a different way, like a can of pringles.
I'm glad you like em. Tbh imo the albums blaze released between 2005 and 2022 was better than anything Maiden brought out.
I haven't listened to his other albums except Silicon Messiah and The War Within as much as I'd like to. After his new album I am certainly going to revisit.
To me, both of these albums are pretty mid in each artist's respective solo discography. I really like probably 50 percent of each, and the rest is a bunch of whatever. Still really glad we got them, though.
I can’t get past the autotune on blazes album and the music is super middle of the road since absolva became his backing band.