The release date for Senjutsu Iron Maiden 's 17th studio album , is getting closer. With September 3rd approaching, the band has already released two songs from the new project: the grandiose " The Writing On The Wall " and the powerful new track " Stratego ".
As the days go by, Iron Maiden seems to be more relaxed about the release, or at least that's what Bruce Dickinson . In an exclusive interview with Metal Hammer , the vocalist revealed that the new album was finished in 2019, but remained "locked in a vault" for two years for fear that the material would be leaked online. None of the band members listened to the album during that period.
“By the end of the recording sessions everyone had gone home, so it was basically me, Steve [ Harris ] and Kevin in the studio,” he says. “We listened to it a few times, concluded it was good, and that was the last time I heard it for almost two years. All of us! Nobody in the band had a copy. Steve, in particular, was so paranoid that someone might leak it on the internet, and probably rightly so, that the album was locked in a safe.”
Dickinson revealed that the first time he heard the album since then was in 2020, when Iron Maiden was mixing the audio for their live album Nights Of The Dead , recorded in Mexico. “I went to Steve’s house and asked if he had a copy of the album and he said it was on his laptop. He himself had only played the record twice and hadn’t listened to it in ages, so we said, ‘Fuck it, put it on the speakers!’. That’s when I thought, ‘This is good!’”
READ ALSO: Iron Maiden producer reveals he received death threats from band fans.
