Bruce left the withering Maiden and after a sloppy start recorded some awesome melodic metal.

Sloppy start? I hope you are not referring to the godly 'Skunkworks', possibly THE most underrated hard rock album of the 90's, and on par with AoB and TCW. 'Balls To Picasso' contains some great songs as well - 'Tears of the Dragon' is Bruce's best song ever. 'Tattooed Millionaire' is a fun hard rock album - obviously different from his other stuff but the quality is there. Now as far as the new Maiden is concerned - sure it's their best since '7th Son', but overall this is pretty much a stinker, safe for 2 or 3 songs; the rest is meandering crap, courtesy of the once brilliant Steve Harris, that goes on and on and never gets to the point. Nowhere near the 80's classics - no wonder they only sold an abysmal 38'000 copies in the US in the first week. Stick a fork in the old Maiden coz she's done. Let's hope Bruce will be a little less hesitant now and go back to making albums with Roy Z - that's where it's at.