Are we doing this? Ok, let's do this.
I should preface by saying Maiden's never been a band I could listen to at great length - even for an entire album. I don't think it's due to a lack of endurance - I can certainly get caught up in the right epic album, or the right speed/power/NWOBHM album. I just think Maiden's song structure and lyrics suggest that they had progressive ambitions which they were not entirely qualified to fulfill.
Sure, there aren't many bands who could present certain concepts (i.e. war) as uniquely and compellingly as Maiden, but there are other concepts that they had no more intellectual claim over than the average band (i.e. religion, insanity, relationships, coming of age, etc.), and which they approached in nearly the exact same way musically - over and over again, ad nauseum - so in my opinion they definitely overextended themselves conceptually. They could have stuck to 5-6 great albums, but instead they made an extra 10-or-so mediocre ones.
As far as Bruce goes, his voice fits in well with the epic/operatic style that Maiden ultimately stuck with, but I don't hear a great deal of emotional depth in it. He seems to be always on a soapbox, and very short on introspective/confessional moments, so there's a lack of dimensionality. Paul Di'Anno had a similar lack of dimensionality, but he was a good punk figure, and that shows in songs like "Prowler" and "Running Free". I think you can relate to Paul on a "desperate teen lashing out against the system" level that you never can with Bruce, and after hearing Paul's work on Maiden's first two albums I can't help but sense lost potential in the Bruce era.
