Blaze Bayley dismisses grunge - "It was trying to kill Iron Maiden"

Blaze Bayley dismisses the whole grunge genre, describing it as "trying to kill Iron Maiden".

Blaze Bayley, formerly of the band Wolfsbane, was hired by Iron Maiden in the mid 1990s to replace former vocalist Bruce Dickinson. Blaze dismissed the grunge bands, saying it was "trying to kill Iron Maiden". During a recent interview on the Crowcast podcast, Bayley said "When I was in Maiden, we were at war with grunge. Grunge was trying to kill us. The U.K. press, they thought the sun shone out of various bands' bottoms and they wanted Maiden to die." When he refers to "those bands", he is referencing bands like Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains and others, who released albums from 1991-1994. He also referenced a show that Iron Maiden played in Seattle, which he referred to as "the heartland of death". He said it was not a good show at at all. "There were these people looking at us like we were some kind of dinosaur, and they were going 'Why aren't they dead yet?' And then you've got a few rows at the front going 'Maiden! Yes!' It's just unbelievable. And that's the war that we had with The X Factor and Virtual XI. We were fighting for the very existence of real heavy metal. And where are they now? Metal is forever, 'cause it's in the heart of fans."