Over the years fans have leapt to defend Iron Maiden's 11th studio album but the truth is that the 90s were lean years for Metal's Greatest Ever Band™ and Virtual XI seemed like the final nail in the coffin for the group that seemed unable to take a wrong step a decade before. While certainly more upbeat and uplifting than the harrowing and patience-testing The X Factor, there was no getting around the fact that by now, with two of its major songwriters long gone, Iron Maiden was not just completely out of ideas but virtually devoid of inspiration. From the ridiculous cover art to the stupidly over-long and obesely self-indulgent second track, Virtual XI is Iron Maiden merely playing by numbers.

Unfairly, Blaze Bayley was long scapegoated for Maiden's failure to fire on both the albums he recorded with them but from a songwriting point of view he was responsible for what is one of VXI's better (and most over-looked) tracks, the Falklands War requiem "Como Estais Amigos" as well as "Futureal", one of the band's shortest and best flat-out rockers. Compared to his performance on the previous release where he often seemed to be struggling, Bayley does admirably with the material he was given here. Indeed, while he doesn't quite carry it off the way Bruce Dickinson would later do, he does give his all in the rousing "The Clansman", the album's clear high point and possibly the best track from this era of the band. Elsewhere though even his best efforts can't save "The Angel and the Gambler" with its ludicrous 9 minute plus running time and seemingly endless chorus repetitions (more than 20) that more than any other song proves that Iron Maiden really was running almost on its reputation alone by 1998.

The rest of the tracks are mostly OK without being truly memorable in any way. It was clear that for this band to continue it would have to change something to get some of the magic back, and less than a year later they did.