Every Iron Maiden Album Opening Song Ranked From Worst To Best

8. Sign Of The Cross - The X Factor

It's safe to say that Blaze Bayley's first's outing as an Iron Maiden singer went much better than his second.

The X Factor from 1995 is one of the band's darker albums, as leader Steve Harris was going through a divorce. The opener, Sign of the Cross, is a whopping 11 minutes 16 seconds long, but all of that time is well spent.

Sign of the Cross sounds like something totally different from Maiden, and not just because of the new vocalist. It's a mixture of slow, ominous atmosphere-building and ravenous riffs, making good use of its time to tell a story and let the band's creativity fully flow.

So there you go, at least of one Bayley's album openers was good.

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Jacob Simmons has a great many passions, including rock music, giving acclaimed films three-and-a-half stars, watching random clips from The Simpsons on YouTube at 3am, and writing about himself in the third person.