I say this respectfully, since most of this is "taste", but I think SOME of the criticism of "repetitive choruses" is overblown. Sure, they repeat. But we're so used to songs that have drums or guitars repeat the same figures over and over while the vocalist takes the song into new territory that when Harris flips the script - in TAATG, the music behind Blaze is "escalating" for lack of a better word - it SEEMS like it's lazy but I don't see it that way. I'm literally listening to TAATG as I type this, and other than the repeats at the end (around the 7:30 mark) there's a pretty consistent change of music behind Blaze. And even at that part, kicking in around 8:00 or so, you get the fills in between the repeats, and some keyboard layering.
I think it depends what you're looking for. I would have to speculate - something I do not like to do - but if I did, I think that it's probably more indicative of Harris's general... not contempt, but lack of reverence for the vocal spot more than anything else. I'm still not a fan of Blaze AS A SINGER IN IRON MAIDEN (I understand his other work to be much better, and I understand HIM to be a wonderful guy to the fans and his bandmates), but Virtual XI has only increased in my estimation over the years. There's nothing on there that I actively dislike.