In a new interview with France’s La Claque FNAC, IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dickinson talked about the band’s new album, Senjutsu, which was released on September 3 via Parlophone/BMG.
“It’s always a big thrill when you get a new IRON MAIDEN album and it comes out,” Bruce said. “We thought it was a great album when we made it. But it was two and a half years ago, nearly three years ago now. So we just have to pinch ourselves and go, ‘Let’s just check.’ It’s one of my favorite albums. And after 17 albums, it’s pretty cool.”
“I would like to say that everything was very organized, but actually, we’re not,” he continued. “We turn up and we sort of go, ‘Oh, has anybody got a couple of ideas?’ And Steve said, ‘I’ve got one idea. I’ve got this track ‘Senjutsu.’ What do we think about having a Samurai Eddie?’ And we were, like, ‘Oh, yeah. Cool. Why haven’t we done that before?’ Because we had an Egyptian Eddie and we had a sci-fi Eddie and we had a Mayan Eddie. The album is like the picture that’s in the frame. But just because the frame is Japanese doesn’t mean every song is organized to be about Japanese themes.”
For Senjutsu — loosely translated as ‘tactics & strategy’, the band once again enlisted the services of Mark Wilkinson to create the spectacular Samurai themed cover artwork, based on an idea by Steve Harris. And with a running time of a little under 82 minutes, Senjutsu, like their previous record The Book Of Souls, will be a double CD album/triple vinyl album.
Senjutsu bowed at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 chart, charting higher than even the band’s early classics like Powerslave and The Number Of The Beast. Nearly 90 percent of the LP’s 64,000 equivalent album units earned came from pure album sales. The critically acclaimed double album debuted one place higher than 2015’s The Book Of Souls and 2010’s The Final Frontier, which both peaked at No. 4.
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