Blaze Bayley – Promise And Terror

In Blaze Bayley’s last gig in December, he announced the release of this album in February of 2010 and presented on stage the first track called “Watching The Night Sky”. Although very good then, I had left the venue with a bittersweet taste of loneliness and nostalgia, both being elements of Blaze’s music through all these years, since “Silicon Messiah” of 1999 up until now. Personally, his albums were never included in my favorites.

So, after his last decent piece of work, “The Man That Would Not Die”, comes “Promise And Terror” which after its first listening, emits the same dark atmosphere as all its predecessors.

As regards the purely musical content of the album, well it moves into familiar paths of both heavy metal in general Blaze Bayley’s own musical characteristics. An example is the opening “Watching The Night Sky” which is very similar to “Man On The Edge”. After the second hearing, I am obliged to repeat what I’ve been repeating concerning Blaze’s band through all these years, that his band is not of equivalent value compared to Bayley. The result is the Bayley stands out and is ahead of the rest in performance something which ends in him being terribly alone.

Lyrically, the album follows the well-known patterns of personal search that characterise Blaze through all these years something easily found in “God Of Speed”, “Faceless”, “The Trace Of Things That Have” and “Surrounded By Sadness”. In his personal career after Maiden, things haven’t been easy for Blaze as he was left with nothing, especially during the time he didn’t even had a record company to support him in his work. Musically it is an album that contains fast, mid and slow tempo tracks. In a word, a typical Blaze Bayley album. However, although not innovative, Promise And Terror contains some fairly good moments with “1633” (based on the novel of Eric Flint and David Webber), “Faceless” and “Time To Dare” to be the highlights of PAT.

Blaze Bayley has never been a “superstar”. However his sheer creativity and devotion, will always bring him the warm applause and sympathy of the metal community. Promise And Terror is nevertheless a very good choice for old school heavy metal fans in the beginning of 2010.