Bruce Dickinson has given the bluntest description yet of his next solo album — and made clear it is not a continuation of "The Mandrake Project".
Speaking to VSX at last month's San Diego Comic-Con, the IRON MAIDEN singer explained where the eighth record sits relative to the cross-media project that occupied him for the better part of two decades. "I've got a new record coming out next year, new solo album. It's kind of standalone. There's one song that has a bit of something to do with 'Mandrake'. Now, the album is heavy as shit. I'm not digging into 'Mandrake'. I think 'Mandrake' has a life now on a comic book level, so it can just go on the basis of story and everything else. I don't need to associate music with it unless it's a really good idea."
He also traced how the whole thing began, which was rather smaller than what it became. "It started out 14, 15, 16, nearly 17 years ago. I was writing material for a solo album. I was thinking about a comic as a way of promoting it, effectively. 'Cause, to me, it struck me that a lot of people that like the kind of music that I do probably dig comics as well. So I thought I'd come up with a very simple story, and it would just be one comic. And so I wrote the characters into some of the songs." One comic became two, then twelve — three four-part episodes published by Z2 Comics, of which book two is now finished and book three will close the story.
On whether he measures new material against his older solo records, Dickinson said he actively avoids it. "I try to not repeat — not because it's bad. You want to move on and put different nuance on things." He reached for an analogy about lighting: turn the lights down, change the colour, and you see the same person in a completely different way. "Music is something which you try not to stick too much of a format, but you are still within a particular... I'm within a particular style, for sure. But I try and vary it as much as I can."
The album is tentatively due in early 2027 via BMG. Most of it was recorded in January and February at Dave Grohl's Studio 606 in Northridge, California with producer Brendan Duffey, who is now mixing it in Jupiter, Florida — and as we reported earlier this month, the vocals are already finished. Dickinson recorded 16 songs in a three-week burst, entirely live: "It's like the anti-A.I. generation," he told Rolling Stone in April.
The record features his touring band — keyboardist Mistheria, drummer Dave Moreno, bassist Tanya O'Callaghan and guitarists Chris Declercq and Philip Näslund — plus percussion from SEPULTURA's Andreas Kisser, and a collaboration with Dickinson's oldest son Austin, formerly of RISE TO REMAIN and AS LIONS.
Some of it will surface sooner than the album. "Tracks from the LP will be out this year, a little bit, so people can hear a little bit of it. At some point this month, I'm shooting four or maybe five videos for it."
Source: blabbermouth.net