In a new interview with Kerrang! magazine, IRON MAIDEN frontman Bruce Dickinson says that band’s new album, Senjutsu, was actually done in spring 2019. He also said that not a lot of people except from band’s management knew that the band is in the studio.
According to Bruce, only he and and Steve Harris have actually heard the final, finished, mixed and mastered product.
“Nobody had one,” Bruce said. “Management didn’t have one. I think Steve had a copy on one laptop and one was locked away in a vault somewhere, and that was it. Obviously, we were thinking it’d escape and somebody would hear it. So to have kept it under wraps for this long is pretty good, really. The last time I heard it was when Steve was mixing the Mexico live album. He hadn’t listened to it for ages, so we put it on and both went, ‘This is really good… wow!’”
“We had no clue, absolutely no idea, what the album was. We didn’t go in there with any set idea or preconception,” he continued. “We had a few ideas. We went into the studio and tried them out, and when they worked, we just recorded straight away. So while we were rehearsing, everything was being recorded – the tape was rolling the whole time.
“Steve would literally lock himself away for two or three days, and we’d all turn up and play pinball. And then he’d say, ‘I think I’ve got one, chaps. Oi! Everybody in the studio!’ Boom. The stuff I wrote with Adrian [Smith, guitarist] was a bit more conventional — we’d stand around and play guitar and sing and do that until we thought we had something. Then we’d rehearse it and put it straight down. It’s more organic, if you like. Steve tends to be quite detailed and meticulous in exactly how he wants it.”
Senjutsu is out on September 3rd via Parlophone Records (BMG in the USA). You can pre-order album via Amazon here.
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.
