Blaze @ Bradford Rio's

You've got to hand it to Blaze Bayley. After the deserved success story that was his Silicon Messiah debut, the formation of his new group Blaze - neither the second coming of Wolfsbane or an Iron Maiden tribute band - proved a sonic move par excellence.

The critics were waiting to pounce - but instead, found themselves ravaged by the musical wolves that are Blaze. Realising they had been mislead by their own stereotypical prejudice, defeat was understood. Justice was done, the battle was won… and to cut a long story short, reviews of praise and glory flooded in.

So, then, to the all-important question. Can Blaze deliver the same quality and hunger that surged through his immense Silicon Messiah World tour, or was it, just like his first album vintage, a flash in the pan of quick fire angst to prove a point to his buddies in Maiden?

In answers to those libellous comments via a hopefully non-dictionary containing word, bollocks. The Tenth Dimension - his second release - is just as convincing an opus - pure, honest metal music. Its not as instantaneously gripping as its predecessor, but it'd take a strong mind to say it doesn't ascend to the same peaks of greatness.

Live, set shining epics such as Stranger To The Light, the bolting title track itself and the masterful, acoustic featuring ballad Meant To Be - seeing Blaze bare his soul lyrically - show Tenth Dimension tracks hit the mark brilliantly live.

The head shredding Seek And Destroy (no doubt shredding guitarist Steve Wray's fingers to boot) opens the set as convincingly as the Wolfsbane museum piece Manhunt closes it. Meanwhile, Silicon Messiah favourites such as Ghost In The Machine, Born As A Stranger and Stare At The Sun remain staple diets of the Bayley live set.

Maiden numbers from the Blaze era are still welcomed to ear numbing effect, (Futureal, Man On The Edge etc), and they'll always remain cannoning metal tunes. Although such is the amount of quality Blaze material that makes us Silicon Messiah and Tenth Dimension, while we'd not encourage such set list behaviour, the truth is the set is strong enough to be made up of Blaze material alone.

Bayley's vocals and crowd leadership peaks, the twin guitar team of Wray and Slater have matured to similar K2 heights and the rhythm section pump of Naylor and Singer is still an awesome backbone on which to tunefully build. Blaze are at their best again. Feel the sweat drip, hear the crowd roar, see the expressions on their faces. Blaze and band? Maximum respect.

Verdict - @@@@