Former Iron Maiden singer, Blaze Bayley, who replaced Bruce Dickinson, recently guested on The Metal Command Podcast. During the interview, found below, he looked back on the first of two albums he recorded with Iron Maiden, 1995's The X Factor.

Bayley: "The X Factor's got some incredible music on it, but the sound of it is so dark, and the way it was produced, it's not accessible like some of the other Maiden albums. You've got to live with that for quite a few spins until you're tuned into what things are doing; then you can get to the music."

"I think that was maybe a problem with it at the time. It's so dark and the sounds of things were quite different to what came before. People who did live with it managed to find it. And it's different cultures as well, different countries. In Sweden and Spain, those albums, people loved them as much as every other album, but in other places, people didn't. It's a different thing."

Bayley will release his new album, Circle Of Stone, on February 23. He recently released the official video for the new single, "Rage".

"Rage" tells the story, from Welsh folklore, of Gelert the faithful hound and his unfortunate demise at the hands of his beloved owner Prince Llewelyn. The animation for the video was developed by Hot Frog Animations. The song features violinist Anne Bakker who also worked with Blaze during the Infinite Entanglement trilogy (2016-2018).

"Rage" is available to pre-save/stream/download now at the usual digital platforms here

Circle Of Stone can be pre-ordered on vinyl LP and CD, here.

Tracklisting:

"Mind Reader"
"Tears In Rain"
"Rage"
"The Year Beyond This Year"
"Ghost In The Bottle"
"The Broken Man"
"The Call Of The Ancestors"
"Circle Of Stone"
"Absence"
"A Day Of Reckoning"
"The Path Of The Righteous Man"
"Until We Meet Again"

"Circle Of Stone" video: