Review by SilentScream213 for Bruce Dickinson - Accident of Birth (1997)

An improvement to be sure, but I do believe its quality has been greatly exaggerated. This is an album full of great heavy Metal tracks, some catchy vocal lines and decent riffs. Songwriting has definitely been expanded from his first three solo albums, and there’s a decent amount of variety to this one.

But does it compare to most of Maiden’s work? Absolutely not. The album is quite reliant on Bruce’s vocals – which do sound great, but even with that said, most of his vocal performance in Maiden was better, and even the song “Tears of a Dragon” on his second solo album tops everything on this. Musically, again, it’s stronger than all his previous solo albums, but about on par with Maiden’s weakest material.

Looking at this album in isolation, not comparing it to Maiden, and not relying on Bruce’s legendary vocalist status, all it is, is a pretty damn solid Heavy Metal album. No more, no less. In my ears it is not the legendary classic many people seem to claim. It does end up being kind of weird when my favorite songs on the album are the softer/more Hard Rock songs (the last three).