Blaze: Tenth Dimension Tour
BLAZE @ DirecTV Music Hall, São Paulo, Brazil (April, 7th 2002)
Review By Thiago Martins
I remember
back in 1996, when I got a chance to see my first Iron Maiden
concert, and Blaze Bayley was the lead singer. I left frustrated. Blaze
couldn’t sing the old tunes as great as Bruce, he had a shy stage
performance, I said, “Man, this isn’t
the man for Iron Maiden”, even though I liked The X Factor a lot.
6 years later, Blaze is not in Iron Maiden anymore; but he’s doing
pretty well. His solo career is consolidated, with two amazing albums:
SILICON MESSIAH and the recently released THE TENTH DIMENSION. With a
completely different perspective, I went to the DirecTV Music Hall on a
rainy and a bit cold Sunday night.
Unfortunately, the audience was disappointing, less than 1,000 headbangers left home to attend to this gig. Maybe the ruined image that
Blaze got in Maiden separated these guys from a perfect heavy metal
night.
The support
act was made by a Brazilian band called Fates Prophecy. I’m not quite
sure, but it was one of their first gigs with new singer Sérgio Faga,
whose post was from the irreplaceable André Boragina (one of the nicest
person I’ve ever got the chance to talk to, who died of cancer last
year). Sergio did a great job, he still needs a bit of “road
experience” to be a little less of a Bruce Dickinson clone and smoothes
his voice a bit – it’s too high to sing in a traditional metal band like
Fates Prophecy, that sometimes can sound more Iron Maiden than
themselves nowadays.
The band mixed a bit of their songs from their first album Into the Mind
with the new one, yet to be released, called Eyes of Truth – recorded
with Boragina on vocals. The highlights of this 45-minute act were “Pay
for Your Sins” and the Iron Maiden cover “Run to the Hills” (perfectly
sung by Sergio).
Less than 30
minutes after the Brazilians left the stage, Blaze was there. Without
any introduction song, just the hi-hat cymbals and “The Launch” started
what I will call as his final redemption for the fans in Sao Paulo. His
band is truly awesome, everyone is perfect at his instrument and has a
great stage performance. I was astonished by them, the way they could
play perfectly every song – even the Maiden ones. Hats off to guitarists
John Slater and Steve Wray, who showed that it’s worthless to be a
virtuoso if the riffs aren’t great; Jeff Singer and Rob Naylor showed
that a band can be heavy as hell even without being fast all the time.
And they were really happy for playing in São
Paulo, it was clear in the expression in their faces and in the way they
reacted to the crowd’s response.
After “The
Launch”, they played Maiden’s “Futureal”. Well, I’m not a fan of Virtual
XI and this song fails in comparison to Blaze’s own songs. But the crowd
here was mostly made up of Iron Maiden fans and their reaction to this song
was great. “Ghost in the Machine” came in the sequence, and this song
really rocks! Not that those other songs didn’t, but this one I really
dig.
Other songs
played that night were “Evolution”, “Identity”, the Wolfsbane great
track “Tough as Steel”, “Stare at the Sun”, “Silicon Messiah” and “The
Brave” from his first album. Not many songs were played from the new
album, since it was not released yet in Brazil (I was one of the crowd
that didn’t know any song from it and left the gig with a great
impression), so they just did “Leap of Faith”, “Kill and Destroy” and
the title-track “The Tenth Dimension”, that ended the first part of the
set.
The selection of songs from Iron Maiden disappointed me a bit. Aside
“Futureal” being an ordinary song, “Como Estais Amigo” was really a
surprise, but it isn’t a good song. Also, I don’t like “When Two Worlds
Collide”, that was played too. I think there are better songs to choose
from Virtual XI, but it would be better if he played his own solo
songs instead of so many Maiden tunes.
One good
surprise, though, was “Virus”, from Best of the Beast compilation. I
must say that I hadn’t heard that song for a long time and also I didn’t
care much for it. That night I changed my mind: it was great live – even
with Blaze kneeling on the floor to read the lyrics of the first verses.
Maybe Maiden could have played that song at their gig while Blaze was
there. It would be better than a bunch of stuff Maiden was playing.
Of course, they did “Man on the Edge” as the first song for the encore.
But the “lowlight” of the gig was Andre Matos special (?) appearance.
It’s a song that is not his style of singing, he just made a small part
of the lyrics (only that “A suitcase, a lunch and a man on the edge…”
till the chorus, before and after the solo) that coincidentally he tried
to put an extremely high scream (“just you look
aroooooooooooooooooooooound”) that completely ruined the song.
To finish the
set, they played the awesome “Born as a Stranger”, with a sing-along
section included in the middle, which I think is usual in his solo gigs.
The gig ended and the band was really happy about the crowds enthusiasm
during the whole set. And they really deserved it.
Blaze was
much more confident in his performance than with Iron Maiden (probably
due to the smaller venue, not the stadiums he did with Maiden), also his
songs suit him perfectly, while most of the Maiden ones didn’t. Anyway,
he still has some weird
actions on stage, like the way he teases the crowd, that is very funny
and it’s already his trademark – he also did this one where he’s running
along the stage like an airplane. Do I need to say that the crowd was
really belting their lungs out? I left the venue completely voiceless! I
can’t avoid mentioning his faces while relating to the crowd. He was
feeling really comfortable on stage and that’s what counts. He and his
band did a great gig and I can’t wait for another one.
Official Blaze Website - www.planetblaze.com
