Friday Release #99
And his name shall be called "Senjutsu".
Please open your calendars and mark September 3rd as the day when the 17th album of the "Iron Maiden" will be released. It will happen exactly 6 years (less than a day but who's counting) after the release of the previous album "The Book of Souls".
The date is not the only connection of the "Senjutsu" album to "The Book of Souls". The band chose to record the sub-album in the "Guillaume Tell" studio in France where the previous album was also recorded. The writing and recording process was also the same in both cases. The band wrote a song, rehearsed it, and immediately recorded It, when everything was still fresh.
Steve Harris noted that the album has some very complex songs that took the band a long time to work on and make them sound exactly the way they wanted, so the process was very challenging.
Bruce Dickinson noted that the album was recorded in early 2019 during the break in the "Legacy" tour. Of course, the corona epidemic delayed things. Bruce added that the songs are very varied with one or two songs that sound quite different from Maiden's usual style.
As you can see, Steve Harris is also this time the main co-writer for the creation of most of the songs, but there is also a respectable representation here for the Dickenson/Smith duo who are responsible for writing 3 of the ten songs on the album, including the single "The Writing On The Wall" a song that already stands out as nothing less than the anthem !!! which was released on July 15 after a long mask of teasers and hints on the web and social media.
"The Writing On The Wall" refers to the story of the "Belshazzar Feast," told in the book of Daniel, during which an inscription appears on the wall, and Daniel interprets it as a prophecy of the destruction of Babylon.
Belshazzar the king of Babylon made a great feast for a thousand of his ministers and his concubines in which they drank wine from the vessels of the destroyed great temple. At that time, a hand was seen writing on the Western Wall against the "menorah" the words "Mana Mana Tekel and Persin." The king was frightened and ordered to bring the sages of Babylon, but only Daniel could interpret the "writing on the wall" as the fall of the Belshazzar kingdom and the destruction of Babylon. At night King Belshazzar was killed and Darius took his place.
All that is left is to hope that "The Inscription on the Wall" is the first hint of a completely new Iron Maiden album.
For Listening: Spotify.