Iron Maiden released Senjutsu , their seventeenth studio album, last Friday, September 3rd. With four tracks exceeding 10 minutes, the album boasts a wide range of sounds, sometimes progressive, exploring different aspects of the band – and much of this comes from Steve Harris .
In a recent interview with 93X Radio , vocalist Bruce Dickinson commented on these characteristics of the album when discussing the track "Lost in a Lost World," which the show's host compared to The Moody Blues or Pink Floyd in their early career.
“Yes, [it feels] totally like that at the beginning. It’s the whole thing: you’ve actually walked into a 1973 progressive rock album, and then you get hit on the head with a hammer unexpectedly,” he summarized (via Ultimate Guitar ). “There’s a lot of stuff like that in various places on the album. A lot of the vocals on this album are much more varied, I’m using a lot more of my range.”
Dickinson's vocal quality is one of the points of consensus among the public so far regarding Senjutsu , the singer's first studio album since recovering from throat cancer, with its variation between "shrill high notes" and deeper or whispered registers.
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“We started using that on The Number of the Beast , that sort of thing. But it’s really much more robust now in whole pieces, with double layers. “And surprisingly, a lot of that came from Steve, not me. You expect that from the vocalist, but a lot of it came from Steve. All that Moody Blues stuff and those layered vocals, that’s all Steve, that’s his vision.”
Dickinson also analyzed the longer tracks, a point of contention among the audience so far. "While there are four tracks that are over 10 minutes long, which is fine, there are some other tracks there that are really good and compact," he argued when discussing "Stratego".
In “Days of Future Past,” which lasts four minutes, “this track could have fit on Piece of Mind or Powerslave , it’s the same kind of energy,” according to the singer. “So, there’s a great mix, it’s a real journey throughout the album,” he concluded.
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