BRUCE DICKINSON: 'We Have A Few Surprises Up Our Sleeve With IRON MAIDEN'

In a new interview with Radioacktiva, the Colombian radio station broadcasting from Bogotá, IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson was asked about his recording and touring activities for the next two years, including plans for MAIDEN as well as those involving his solo band. He said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "The new solo album, frankly, is up there with the best stuff that I've ever done. I mean, it's a whole level above [2024's] 'The Mandrake Project', and it's absolutely amazing. You have to wait till next year to hear it, although there will be something out very soon, a first track. And the videos, we shot five videos for it now. The whole thing fits together as a story. So, it's really exciting, that world. As to how it fits with IRON MAIDEN, it fits very easily because everybody in the band — Steve [Harris, MAIDEN bassist] loves the new [solo] material that I've done. So, we have a few surprises up our sleeve with IRON MAIDEN, which I can't tell you about. But, obviously, I'll be touring next year with my solo record. I'll be promoting it. But all of that we'll get around to telling people when the time is right. And that time will be quite soon. But people will be, I think, pretty excited."

Bruce also talked about MAIDEN's ongoing "Run For Your Lives" tour, which touched down in North America earlier this summer/fall. The trek marks 50 years of IRON MAIDEN, with a setlist pulled from the band's first nine albums. Following the band's North American dates, IRON MAIDEN will head to Latin America and Oceania, before wrapping the tour in Japan.

"Even though we're doing a set, which, obviously, is looking from the beginning of the band right up until kind of 'No Prayer For The Dying', so about halfway through our albums, even though that set is obviously songs which come from the past, we're always looking at ways of improving the storytelling, improving the drama, whether it's through the costumes or whether it's through the screens now," Dickinson said. "The amazing 3D video screens we've got. And it's an incredible show. It really is. And we've still got pyros, and we've still got the walk-on Eddies and stuff like that. And the band, we just play. We actually almost semi ignore the show because we're still basically just a band playing in a club in London. It's just that there's 40,000 people in our club."

Since forming in 1975, IRON MAIDEN has released classic albums like "The Number Of The Beast", "Powerslave" and "Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son".

MAIDEN's most recent LP, the band's seventeenth, "Senjutsu", came out in 2021.

In December 2024, IRON MAIDEN played the final show of its "The Future Past Tour" at Allianz Parque in São Paulo, Brazil. That run of concerts was the last for longtime drummer Nicko McBrain, who has since been replaced by Simon Dawson, a former session drummer and MAIDEN bassist Steve Harris's rhythm section partner of the past 14 years with BRITISH LION.

Dickinson's upcoming solo music videos were filmed in August in Nevada with Leo Liberti, the Italian-Brazilian award-winning director and post-production artist who previously worked with Bruce on the recent "Change Of Heart" and "Tears Of The Dragon" videos.

Dickinson's new solo album is tentatively due in early 2027 via BMG.

Most of Bruce's eighth solo album was recorded this past January and February at Dave Grohl's Studio 606 in Northridge, California with producer Brendan Duffey, who previously helmed the partly re-recorded, remixed and newly mastered version of Bruce's second solo album "Balls To Picasso", now titled "More Balls To Picasso", which was made available in July 2025.

Dickinson's follow-up to "The Mandrake Project" is being mixed by Brendan at his Brendan Duffey Audio high-end mixing and mastering studio in Jupiter, Florida.

Dickinson recently told Steve Harkins of TalkShopLive that his upcoming solo album will include a collaboration with his son Austin. Bruce's oldest son, the 35-year-old Austin is a musician best known as the former frontman for the metal bands RISE TO REMAIN and AS LIONS.
This past April, Bruce revealed that he recorded 16 songs for his new solo album over a three-week period earlier this year. He told Rolling Stone magazine: [We did it] all 100 percent live. It's like the anti-A.I. generation."

Dickinson's upcoming album was recorded with his touring band, consisting of keyboardist Mistheria, drummer Dave Moreno, bassist Tanya O'Callaghan, and guitarists Chris Declercq and Philip Näslund.

In February, SEPULTURA guitarist Andreas Kisser shared photos of him with Bruce at Studio 606 and revealed that he plays percussion on Dickinson's new LP.

Bruce and his long-term co-writer and producer Roy "Z" Ramirez recorded "The Mandrake Project" largely at Los Angeles's Doom Room, with Roy Z doubling up as both guitarist and bassist. The recording lineup for "The Mandrake Project" was rounded out by Mistheria and Moreno, both of whom also featured on Bruce's previous solo studio album, "Tyranny Of Souls", in 2005.

Dickinson made his recording debut with IRON MAIDEN on the "Number Of The Beast" album in 1982. He quit the band in 1993 in order to pursue his solo career and was replaced by Blaze Bayley, who had previously been the lead singer of the metal band WOLFSBANE. After releasing two traditional metal albums with former MAIDEN guitarist Adrian Smith, Dickinson rejoined the band in 1999 along with Smith.

Photo credit: Ryan Chang (courtesy of FunHouse Entertainment / Live Nation)