Iron Maiden and "The Writing On The Wall"

Iron Maiden drops new clues about the announcement and concept of their new album; see them all

Editorial Staff

5 years ago

The band may announce their next album starting this Monday, the 19th

After much mystery , Iron Maiden returned with "The Writing on The Wall ," their first new song in six years. Now, the band has completed another stage of the enigma and may announce their next album as early as this Monday, the 19th.

The promotion of the song involved flyers in the vicinity of the Download Festival venue, t-shirts with the Belshazzar's Feast , and finally, clues hidden in the band's album covers. With the release of the single , Maiden's social media continued to publish the covers in chronological order, but with new riddles.

From the self-titled Iron Maiden (1980) to Dance of Death (2003), all the covers featured some symbol related to the release of "The Writing on The Wall": the acronym WOTW, the t-shirt with the flyer for the fictional event , or the castle that appears in the song's music video.

Starting last Thursday, the 15th, the clues began to involve the number 17, which coincides with the band's next studio album release. Beginning with the artwork for A Matter of Life and Death (2006) and continuing through Book of Souls (2015), the number appears in different forms, whether in Roman numerals (XVII) or in the registration marks that also appear on the motorcycles of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in the music video for the new song. See the list of references in the animation here .

Following the schedule for releasing previous album covers, the announcement of the album title and cover art for the new album should happen this Monday, the 19th. With the new clues, there are some speculations circulating among the band's fans, such as a possible immersion in Japanese culture, indicated by the Eddie Samurai in the music video, and the use of the Shi (死) symbol on the mascot's armor and on the key that appears on the edited cover of The Final Frontier (2010). The word means "death".

To make life easier for Maiden fans, the Wikimetal analyzed all the edited album covers from the band's discography and identified the hidden clues in each one. See them below in chronological order, along with an explanation of each highlight.

Iron Maiden

Acronym WOTW