Event:	Blaze Bayley: The Tour That Will Not Die
Written by:	Ivor, drynwhyl
Published:	06.05.2009
Galleries:	Blaze Bayley - Tapper, Tallinn, Estonia, 19.04.2009 by Ivor (40)
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What possible reason could I have had to go to a Blaze Bayley concert on a Sunday evening? I mean, anything other than hanging out with a friend and laying a "good" foundation for the upcoming working week by draining beers one after the other. Unfortunately, as it turned out in retrospective, there pretty much were no other good reasons. However, I was ignorant of that beforehand and for whatever reason, I felt I had to be there.

Steel Scream (by Rainer)

More often than not, the main act usually "manages" to get the best sound. This wasn't the case this time. Estonian heavy metal group Steel Scream had the honour of having the cleanest and bass-rich sound of the night. Whether this was due to the fact that they used another drum set or a local sound engineer, is beyond me. Be as it may, Steel Scream offered quite a nice surprise – strong and steady drumming with Zakk Wylde-like guitar work and an overall energetic performance.

Even though this was my first encounter with Steel Scream, they managed to leave a very professional attitude. Moreover, at times I had some memory pictures of Cannibal Corpse's live flashing before my eyes. The vocalist of Steel Scream really looks like a young George Fisher. These impressions were constantly confirmed with the frontman's headbanging. Luckily, their music is a far cry from the American death metal veterans but who knows, perhaps with enough whiskey and other substance consumption we may discover one day that Estonia has its own death metal export!







Motherstone (by Rainer)

Unbeknownst to me, I somehow anticipated a stoner rock performance from a band called Motherstone. This ill-illusion was crushed very fast with their female singer entering the stage. I really can't help drawing a parallel with Lacuna Coil – both musically and in appearance. Or is it because the Italian blood flows the same everywhere?

Musically, I somehow got tired after three songs or so. I had the same thought which has visited me when listening to Theatre of Tragedy – I would surely like the band more if they lost the male singer. Even though numb to the music after the first fifteen minutes, my eyes still remained locked on the stage. If nothing else then the female singer's outfit was enough to catch one's eye. It is not every day you have the opportunity to feast your eyes on a Milla Jovovich look-alike from the movie "Fifth Element."











Blaze Bayley

Blaze came on stage swearing so much that it would put even a seasoned street kid to shame. Having introduced himself and the band through loads and loads of obscenities the band kicked off. I'm not particularly sure what I expected. I had not heard Blaze before and I've not really been interested in Iron Maiden either. However, while heavy metal is no rewarding experience for me, I'm not put off by it at the gigs. Usually, that is.

Blaze managed to show me the flip side of the coin, the tedious and boring heavy metal. While not really power metal, Blaze's music bares a lot of similarities to it. The dreadful galloping pounding of the drums supported by similar galloping guitar riffs, for example. It's okay for a song or two but with each passing moment more and more you wait for the song to end and wish the next one was different. If it weren't for the the Maiden era songs, this would have been a really sad event. Maiden songs were, well not exactly life savers, but they livened the set up considerably. Between his own and Maiden songs it became quite clear which are average at best.





While Blaze was whirling around the stage and trying to get the crowd going along, he didn't get the job done well enough. Okay, it's sort of hard job, when there's less than 100 people in the venue that could fit at least five times more. It's not exactly a desert wind blowing the sand around but it was quite close to that cliché scene from the movies. Granted, most of the people that were there, were there because of him and were enjoying the performance. That's probably one if not the only advantage of a gig on a Sunday evening. However, the feeling of emptiness persisted throughout the gig. For it to vanish I should have been in front of the stage, in a two meter radius from Blaze himself. Which, of course, wasn't going to happen given the music he played.

To draw a conclusion of the event, I must say that by missing a gig you never know what you are missing. However, by not missing a gig you'll always gain knowledge of what you could've missed. It's a pity that there wasn't much to be missed this time. With two warm-up bands, Steel Scream from Estonia and Motherstone from Italy, this gig of Maiden's former singer Blaze Bayley ended up being a flop. While Steel Scream had the sounds, and Motherstone had the looks, Bayley pretty much had neither and compensated it with boredom. Shame really. It might have been different.





Blaze Bayley's set list
1. Man Who Would Not Die (The Man Who Would Not Die)
2. Blackmailer (The Man Who Would Not Die)
3. Smile Back At Death (The Man Who Would Not Die)
4. Virus (Virus) (Iron Maiden)
5. The Clansman (Virtual XI) (Iron Maiden)
6. The Launch (Silicon Messiah)
7. Lord Of The Flies (The X Factor) (Iron Maiden)
8. The Tenth Dimension (Tenth Dimension)
9. Identity (Silicon Messiah)
10. Kill & Destroy (Tenth Dimension)
11. Ten Seconds (Blood & Belief)
12. Samurai (The Man Who Would Not Die)
13. Voices From The Past (The Man Who Would Not Die)
14. Futureal (Virtual XI) (Iron Maiden)
15. Leap Of Faith (Tenth Dimension)
16. Man On The Edge (The X Factor) (Iron Maiden)
17. Robot (The Man Who Would Not Die)