Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview for the Musicians Institute’s MI Conversation Series, Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson offered an update on his next solo album. Notably, the frontman already has 18 songs demoed.

Dickinson said the following when asked about the reception “The Mandrake Project” received:

“Yeah, it was great. Honestly, the reception was great. The reaction to the band when we toured all through Europe [last year] was fantastic. Obviously, we just did two or three shows here in Southern California [in April 2024] just to kind of warm things up before we went down to Brazil… But, yeah, it was brilliant. And people got it. I mean, not everybody is gonna get everything you do — it’s not compulsory — but I thought it was a really good, varied album. It was heavy, but it was emotional and stuff. So it was really good. And it worked really well live. In fact this, a couple of tracks [from the album] that we didn’t play — well, we’ve never actually played — we’re gonna be playing on the U.S. tour. ‘Shadow Of The Gods’, which is the most unplayed popular track on the record. So, yeah, you get the benefit of that, and all the people in Europe will be jealous.

We’re gonna have a lot of fun on this tour coming [up]. Yeah, we did The Observatory [in Santa Ana, California] and two shows at the Whisky [A Go Go in West Hollywood, California in April 2024] as The House Band Of Hell, which is kind of cool. We’re still undecided whether or not to call ourselves ‘Bruce Dickinson’, in brackets, ‘featuring The House Band Of Hell. ‘ But I think it’s kind of cool, and we kind of adjusted to all that. We are a crew now as a band.”

He also added the following about his next album:

“I’ve just been in the demo studio with everybody for the last three weeks, and we ended up with 18 tracks in 15 days…

It’s gonna be a really cool album. And, obviously, the guy that’s producing it, Brendan Duffey, he mixed ‘Mandrake’. We started off with him doing the Atmos mixes and then kind of morphed into, ‘I take it you do stereo as well.’ And he’s great. So, we are just keeping the same crew on this record. And [I’m] looking to record it next year, early next year. I’ve got some gaps. January, February, March, April is kind of free zone for me next year.”

[via Blabbermouth]