It was a war that was won! A lot of thoughts come to mind when the name Blaze Bayley comes up. In recent years, his time with Iron Maiden in the mid-‘90s has been garnering more respect and praise and while the oft-criticized frontman must feel vindicated, the true treasure lies in his solo work, which has continued to impress. New opus War Within Me keeps it straight to the point with hard-hitting guitars and melodies that will sure remind of this former band! While Maiden love to hit listeners with long winding epics, Bayley punches with short bursts of fire. Each track hovers around 4 minutes as Bayley and his band (especially guitarist Chris Appleton) go on the attack for ten tracks of melodic heavy metal with soaring choruses, searing guitars, and poignant lyrics. War Within Me achieves victory and lands at #21 on our countdown.

BraveWords spoke to Bayley for a feature story; an excerpt below:

Bayley's goal for War Within Me was simple and pure: to create a positive and uplifting album for the fans.

"I already had a couple song ideas before we started writing, but with the pandemic and the lockdowns I felt this had to be a positive record," he explains. "My fans tell me they like my positive lyrics, they get through different situations listening to my music, so I figured I would do something like that here. I'm in this privileged situation where I'm in people's heads. They're going to invite me into their heads, so what am I going to say when I get there? It has to be something which says, 'If things seem hopeless you can get through it, if you are broken you can heal.' That's the message that I wanted to bring across, that by the time you get to the end of these ten songs you feel uplifted, and it worked. Some bits just came to us and we worked to make sure they were uplifting, and other bits we wrestled with. In some cases it took hours of working in circles, leaving a song and coming back to it later, and it eventually turned into a song we were happy with."

Historically, Bayley's solo records have always been cerebral in nature, going all the way back to his first official release, Silicon Messiah, in 2000. He is a storyteller and has always been about serving up mindfood, with the Infinite Entanglement trilogy (2016 - 2018) being the best example of this. War Within Me continues this tradition, getting straight to the point and immersing the listener from the first riff.

"That's so good to hear because this was so much work," Bayley smiles. "No one outside the creative team had anything to do with it, and this is the kind of reaction we were going for. Will people understand it? Hopefully. Will they think it's cheesy? Maybe. But this is a metal record, so we used these big chords and these riffs and whatever clichés were necessary to create the journey. It's great you said that. Thanks very much. It's a relief."

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