Blaze Bayley, frontman of Iron Maiden from the mid-to-late-'90s, has dismissed grunge and said that it was "trying to kill" them at the time.

Bayley was hired as the band's vocalist after Bruce Dickinson's departure in 1993, and this is the time when grunge was in its prime.

"When I was in Maiden, we were at war with grunge,” the singer admitted during an interview on the Crowcast podcast. “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.”

"Those bands" refers to Nirvana, Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots and more — who had all released their most successful albums between 1991 and 1994.

Bayley also mentioned a show Iron Maiden played in Seattle, which he referred to as "the heartland of death," and noted that it wasn't a good show 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?',” he remembered. “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," he concluded.

Listen to the full episode below.

Blaze Bayley Interview — Crowcast

Top 90 Hard Rock + Metal Albums of the 1990s

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