If you've ever been to a Blaze Bayley (or Blaze) live show you probably noticed how hearty the band, in whichever formation, was. The shows of Mr. Bayley have mostly happened in smaller venues during his solo career after his Iron Maiden stint. I personally like places that draw under 1500 people.

After a few messy years, in 2016, Blaze found stable backing musicians for himself. It was the English heavy metal band Absolva, who he have been with Mr. Bayley since. These guys are skilled musicians which isn't news when thinking about gangs of instrumentalists backing Blaze, and definitely much tighter than 'The King of Metal' era.

Blaze Bayley has a big bunch of digitally released live albums and EPs, but I always like to go with physical ones, except when I'm shuffling music on Youtube on a hard day's night. This comes with a rather neat cover art and a bunch of photos from the show. It looks professional. This does not have the best of live productions, but the power and vibe is in, and this fucking rocks! I do not think there was any overdubbing done, just using guitar wizardry like harmonizer I suppose.

The set list mainly consist of 'Infinite Entanglement' trilogy songs from 2016-2018, four Iron Maiden covers and the title track of 2000's Blaze debut album, 'Silicon Messiah'. The 'IE' songs aren't found on any other live release but 'Live in Czech' which came out a year after this (gladly it has a bit different set list: 7 other BB songs, plus the Blaze song is different as is one Maiden song), so it is not clashing that way too much. This is why this CD edition should exist.

The place the gig was played isn't big at all, maybe for about 500-1000 attendees (the place is Chez Paulette, in Pagney-Derrier-Barine, and looks interesting to say the least). The crowd is probably all Blaze fans, so you can guess how's the vibe! The performances here are full of blasting energy, as is expected from Blaze Bayley and Absolva. The sound is airy, nicely giving the hint how the place is (and sometimes making it even bigger, thanks to reverbed guitar tone during lead parts). Being a raw soundboard recording, it is like a good quality bootleg. The drums are a bit flat, and are slightly obstructed at times by the guitar and the bass, as well as, of course, Blaze's vocals.

Blaze Bayley's singing has been debated over and over, but his deep baritone voice and slowish vibration is very much different to many a metal music singers. He's pushing his everything here, and knowing how he moves, sometimes missing the mic a bit. He handles the gig more the well, shouting at the crowd, giving longish speeches in both English and French. His band members are ace players. Guitarist Chris Appleton handles all but last five songs alone, except on the last five songs where his brother Luke (ex-Iced Earth) gets on stage. Still, the songs sound full on the guitar department, thanks to harmonizer or/and delay and such.

This CD edition is only for the collectors of Blaze Bayley stuff, because it's just so raw. Other folks are better with checking out his numerous solo albums, if they aren't familiar as yet. Anyway, I played this in my rather crap car stereo, and did not hear the guitars but here and there, so this is not essential at all. There's also a DVD video version of this gig, which is of course far more interesting. Including a lame 8-page booklet strengthens the feel of rushed work here. Maybe it was thought not to sell much... Still, this may possibly wake one's interest towards Mr. Bayley.

Rating: 6 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
06/26/2023 19:13