Iron Maiden released The X Factor on October 2, 1995. Their tenth studio album was the first with former Wolfsbane singer Blaze Bayley, who took over after Bruce Dickinson’s departure. Bayley also helped write five of its 11 songs, establishing a working partnership with Steve Harris and Janick Gers.
“Man on the Edge” emerged from Bayley’s first songwriting session with Gers in April 1994. As Bayley recalled to Metal Hammer, he drove from Birmingham to the guitarist’s London home with a chorus taking shape in his head. Gers had the riff; Bayley had words inspired by the 1993 film Falling Down. Their collaboration became the album’s lead single. Harris’ approval mattered personally to Bayley, who had admired the bassist’s writing and felt his own lyrics had been overlooked amid Wolfsbane’s party-band reputation.
Working on the rest of the album required a different approach from the one Bayley had known in Wolfsbane. In an interview with Ginger Nuts of Horror, he described sessions conducted at acoustic volume, with the vocal melody and arrangement easy to hear. “The voice was always the loudest thing in the room,” he said. He kept a book of lyrics and tried matching passages to the musical ideas his new bandmates were developing. Harris also encouraged him to explore his lower register, a process Bayley described in a 2025 interview with The Metal Crypt as discovering capabilities he had scarcely used before.
Some of the words predated his arrival in Maiden. In that interview, Bayley explained that “2 A.M.” grew from lyrics he had written about working a job he hated and fearing that his musical ambitions were finished. Those concerns became part of a song he shared with Harris and Gers.
The unease across the album was not a mood the band had agreed to manufacture. Bayley told Ginger Nuts of Horror that it reflected what the musicians were experiencing, including uncertainty over Maiden’s future without Dickinson. He remembered Harris arriving with the complete music and lyrics for “Sign of the Cross” as a moment that strengthened his confidence in the project. The song became the album’s opening statement, running 11 minutes and 18 seconds.
Harris produced The X Factor with Nigel Green at Barnyard Studios. According to Bayley’s Metal Crypt interview, the sessions lost several days to problems with two synchronized digital tape machines. An approaching tour then imposed a deadline on finishing the record. Bayley recalled Harris’ position on material that might be left over: “We don’t write B-sides.” Every song was supposed to meet the standard for the album. Choosing the final sequence meant considering how the songs worked together, with some recordings ultimately appearing on singles instead.
Bayley recorded one more studio album with Maiden, Virtual XI in 1998, before Dickinson returned in 1999. “Sign of the Cross” continued into the reunited band’s live repertoire. Maiden performed it with Dickinson at Rock in Rio in 2001, and that recording appeared on the live album Rock in Rio in 2002.
