Iron Maiden The X Factor

[Riff Raff]

1. "Sign of the Cross"
2. "Lord of the Flies"
3. "Man on the Edge"
4. "Fortunes of War"
5. "Look for the Truth"
6. "The Aftermath"
7. "Judgement of Heaven"
8. "Blood on the World's Hands"
9. "The Edge of Darkness"
10. "2 a.m."
11. "The Unbeliever"

 

[Riff Raff]

Far far superior album for me to Fear of the Dark and No Prayer. I think Blaze did a great job on this album. Sign of the Cross is my favourite.

 

[Lynch]

Far far superior album for me to Fear of the Dark and No Prayer.

Wow really!? You may be the only person I've ever heard say that. Typically, I think this album gets lumped in as the 2nd worst IM album ever.. with XI being the worst.



I will give the album a listen tonight and see what sticks out as I can't think of anything from memory that was too memorable.

 

[Riff Raff]

Wow really!? You may be the only person I've ever heard say that. Typically, I think this album gets lumped in as the 2nd worst IM album ever.. with XI being the worst.



I will give the album a listen tonight and see what sticks out as I can't think of anything from memory that was too memorable.

Yeah I really think that and I understand most people think otherwise. I just found No Prayer and most of Fear to be extremely boring. Not shit but pretty poor for me anyway. I found X Factor to be more darker and interesting to listen to. Virtual XI however I agree is the worst Maiden album which lacked memorable tracks except maybe one or two songs. X Factor though I thought was pretty good.

 

[Lynch]

Ugh... I'm having a tough time getting through this album. I am on Look For the Truth right now. I was thinking I'd listen to X-Factor and XI back to back to get it overwith, but I can tell I will definitely need to take a couple of breaks.

The music is ok, but there is nothing special anywhere on the first 5 songs musically. It's all pretty generic and boring compared to much of their previous work. Blaze's vocals do nothing for me. He might work in some capacity, but to me, it sounds like the band recorded the entire musical part of the album and Blaze came in at the end to throw down the vocal tracks but did it at a completely different studio with a different producer and a bad mixer. It just doesn't meld together the way it should. There is no depth in his vocals. Sounds like he's singing on a broom closet with really bad (or lack of) acoustics.




I thought I was going to compare Iron Maiden albums without Dickenson to the Priest albums without Halford, but after listening to these first few tracks, I think Owens is 10x the vocalist that Blaze could ever hope to be.

 

[Riff Raff]

Ripper Owens was never the problem for me on those albums I actually liked Jugulator but on Demolition the rest of the band sounded so fizzed out and awful it was a joke of an album. I feel the same about most of Maiden on Virtual XI.

 

[Lynch]

I almost gave up on it... I'm glad that I didn't. The best two songs were the last two.

Really close for me, between 2am and The Unbeliever. Musically and
vocally, both were better than anything else on the album and feel a
lot more inspired than the rest of this release. Blaze still isn't great on
The Unbeliever, but the music might be enough to earn my vote.

 

[Hydrazoic Acid]

Sign of the Cross

 

[That 70s Guy]

Man on the Edge

 

[tomcat]

I went with 2 am