BRUCE DICKINSON: "'We've got 18 tracks demoed" for next solo album
18-08-2025
During an August 14 appearance on SiriusXM‘s “Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk”, IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson talked about his upcoming “The Mandrake Project Live 2025” North American solo tour, which is scheduled to kick off on August 22 in Anaheim, California. He said: “We did three warmup shows over here (in California in April 2024) and then dived down to Brazil, did a bunch there, and then went back to Europe and did a load of festivals and headline shows and everything. So that went amazing. I mean, the reaction in in Europe was great. So the promoters are all getting on board now for 2027 for the new solo record, the new tour and everything now. So I’m, like, okay, that’s all good. But the USA is unfinished business. So, yeah, I’ve gotta come over and just at least show the band, get the word out, have people’s reactions. ‘Cause I know the way that the world is now, is you wanna see it and people are gonna talk. And people that didn’t go to the show, hopefully their buddies go, ‘Wow, you should have been there.’ But that’s how you build, isn’t it? It’s old school, but it’s how you build. I’m not gonna be building my audience on TikTok. That’s for sure.”
After “Trunk Nation” host Eddie Trunk noted that “it’s amazing” Dickinson still has the drive and ambition to want to build his solo band at this point in his life and his career, Bruce said: “I’m not one for trying to do mission impossible, but I think you have to give everything a chance, and especially if you love what you do and you think the music is worth it. Then it’s not an imposition in your life to go out and make the effort. And the band is incredible. I mean, they’re on fire.”
Dickinson also spoke about his plans for more new solo music following the release of his latest solo album, “The Mandrake Project”, which arrived in March 2024. Bruce said: “We are gonna do a new album — we are recording the new album, rather — in January next year here in L.A. So, this is a great way of just getting the band locked in into the mentality of that. In fact, we were in the studio, well, just yesterday for three or four days, doing updates on the demos that we did with drum machines and things like that. Well, we’ve done them with the whole band now, and that just takes the songs to another level for the new album.”
Asked if his next solo album will be “conceptual”, like “The Mandrake Project” was, Bruce said: “Well, ‘Mandrake’ was kind of semi-conceptual. It was conceptual in its visual approach more than the music. There were elements of the music that were connected with the comic. And we’ve actually just published the book, the first book of the first four episodes of the comic. So that’s something that people can get that’s got some solidity to it. They can look at it and go, ‘Oh, yeah, I get what this is all about.’ But the albums have always got to be standalone units. And the stuff we’ve got — we’ve got 18 tracks demoed for the album. And we won’t record 18 tracks, but I think we’ve probably settled on — nine, 10, 11 of them are absolute bangers, and the other ones we’ll just see where we go with them and what it ends up like. But the band are on fire.”
Regarding what fans can expect to hear on his next solo album, Bruce said: “It will be a different feel to the album because this is gonna be recorded live. I mean, ‘Mandrake’ was a bit like stitching together Frankenstein‘s monster, ’cause it was stuff from 2014 and then it was stuff from after COVID, and all of it glued together. So sonically it was a little bit all over the place.”
Bruce also talked in more detail about the setlist for “The Mandrake Project Live 2025” North American tour, saying: “We’ll do one (IRON MAIDEN song). We’re gonna prepare a couple. But we’ll do one every show. One of them is gonna be ‘Revelations’. The reason for that is because we’re going down — in the middle of the tour, we go down for one show in Brazil, which is the 40th anniversary of me setting foot in Brazil with MAIDEN. It’s São Paulo at this big festival called The Town. And so ‘Revelations’ is a really kind of seminal track because that was the track in which I split my head open with the guitar blood pouring down my face, that was on the front cover of every newspaper in Brazil the day after the Rock In Rio festival in 1985.”
Asked by Trunk how he ended up splitting his head open, Bruce said: “I played guitar at the beginning of ‘Revelations’ on that tour. And I was so pissed off with the monitor guy, ’cause the monitors were sounding awful and everything, and it was all disorganized and yada, yada, yada. And only the biggest gig we’d ever done in our lives. So, I’m waving at him, ‘Ah.’ And then I took the guitar off, and I took it off in such a goofy way that the edge of the guitar hit me across the nose like that and split my head open. And I’m bleeding from a head wound and it’s really hot, so it looks impressive — lots of blood. And it’s all on TV — so it’s on national TV — and I’m bleeding all over the place. And the Brazilians absolutely went bonkers. And the whole of South America saw it went, ‘Oh my God. He’s bleeding for his art.’ And Rod (Smallwood), my manager, came up and I was, like, trying to wipe it off. And this roadie came up and said, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Rod says, can you squeeze it and make it bleed some more? It looks amazing on the cameras.’ So to this day, when you talk about that song and that festival in Brazil, they talk about that image and that moment that was like the image of the festival. It was during that song. So when you play that song, it has an extra meaning and weight down there. But it’s quite a long song. So, we’ve got other songs in the set that we could do of our own stuff as well. So, I’ve got my eyes on another MAIDEN tune, which has never ever been played — ever.”
Dickinson declined to name the other MAIDEN song he and his solo band will prepare for the upcoming tour, saying: “You have to find out yourself. It’s all gonna come out after we play it for the first time. But you can keep people guessing. ‘Are they gonna do it tonight? Where’s it gonna be?’ And things like that. And the thing is about this band is that they’re good enough that we could go in the toilet and learn something five minutes before we go on stage and go and do it.
“We do try to vary the set a little bit so if people decide to come to the Boston show and then come to the New York show, yeah, we’ll do something different in the New York show we didn’t do in Boston and vice versa,” Dickinson added. “So, that’s nice. But, yeah, I’m gonna cover a lot of ground in the set. I don’t believe in doing a set in which you make people suffer: ‘You will get all of this album, whether you like it or not.’ I’m there to entertain people and have a great time and show off the band. So, there’s gonna be stuff from ‘Accident At Birth’ and ‘The Chemical Wedding’ — tracks that people have not heard ever. We’re playing ‘The Alchemist’ and stuff like that, which everybody just goes, ‘Oh my God.’ And it’s bone-crushingly heavy live. And we’re doing ‘Book of Thel’. And then there’s other stuff. There’s at least two or three songs off ‘Mandrake’. We’re gonna be doing ‘Shadow Of The Gods’, which we’ve never played, ever. So all of last year we’d never played that song. And it’s probably one of the top songs off the record. So America’s gonna get that song. Obviously we’re gonna play ‘Tears Of The Dragon’, ’cause I think we’d be lynched if we didn’t. But there’ll be another couple of (songs from the reworked version of ‘Balls To Picasso’) ‘More Balls (To Picasso)’ as well. And there’s a song off ‘Skunkworks’. There’s nothing, at the moment, off ‘Tattooed Millionaire’. And there’s two or three options for doing things off ‘Tyranny Of Souls’. So, really, it’s a pretty across-the-board solo-track thing. And funnily enough, think throwing ahead to what we do in ’27, I’m thinking, oh, my God. There’s so many other tracks that you could drop in to a tour in ’27, which we haven’t played and we haven’t played live as well. ‘Cause I’ve got seven albums to pick from.”
In a recent interview with Charlie Kendall of Charlie Kendall’s Metalshop, IRON MAIDEN singer Bruce Dickinson spoke about his plans for more new solo music following the release of his latest solo album, “The Mandrake Project”, which arrived in March 2024. Bruce said: ”We’re going in the studio in January next year to record the album with Brendan Duffey, who remixed (Dickinson‘s second solo album, 1994’s) ‘Balls To Picasso’ and did an amazing job. So we go in the studio with him in January, and we are looking to release the album in ’27… The amazing band that is gonna record the new record with me is gonna be the same band that toured in Europe with me, and it’s gonna be the same band that’s gonna tour with me in 2027 when we release the new record. Or at least that’s the idea anyway, to release a new record in 2027.”
Dickinson also talked about his upcoming “The Mandrake Project Live 2025” North American tour, which is scheduled to kick off on August 22 in Anaheim, California. He said: “This summer I’m touring the USA for the first time with ‘Mandrake’, and also we’re playing stuff from (1998’s) ‘The Chemical Wedding’, (1997’s) ‘Accident Of Birth’… I mean, I’ve got seven studio albums to pick from. Obviously, I’m gonna be playing some stuff from ‘Balls To Picasso’, so ‘Tears (Of The Dragon)’ is gonna be in there and some other stuff, ‘Gods Of War’ probably, for sure. And a real cool mix of tracks. I mean, stuff like ‘The Alchemist’, people in Europe, they’re, like, ‘Oh my God. He’s playing ‘The Alchemist’ from ‘The Chemical Wedding’.’ I went, ‘Yep, we’re doing that. And ‘Chemical Wedding’.’ And other things too that people will go, ‘Oh, that’s really cool.’ I hope they do anyway.”
According to Bruce, his setlist for the upcoming solo tour will include one IRON MAIDEN song, “Revelations”, which was written solely by him and originally appeared on the band’s 1983 album “Piece Of Mind”. He explained: “Because I’m going down to South America on this run just for one show — ’cause the reason is it’s the 40th anniversary since I set foot in Rock In Rio, and there’s a big festival in São Paulo called The Town. So it’s a huge festival. I’m down there. I’m gonna be doing the show (on September 7). So I’m gonna play one of what I might call my MAIDEN songs, ’cause obviously I wrote some of them completely on my own. Da da. People say, ‘Hey, who wrote the guitar part to ‘Revelations’?’ I went, ‘You know the bit where it says who wrote the song? Did you see anybody else’s name there?’ They go, ‘Oh, man, I didn’t know you played guitar.’ So anyway, I used to play guitar with MAIDEN for 10 seconds on stage, but I think the bastards never plugged it in.”
Reflecting on MAIDEN‘s 1985 performance at the Rock In Rio festival, Bruce said: “So, I’m in Rio, and the sound was awful. I got so pissed off. I took the guitar off. I was so grumpy. I hit myself in the head, blood cold coming down from a head wound, from the guitar, from the edge of the guitar. That was all on the big screen. So the audience were, like, ‘Oh my God. He’s bleeding for his heart.’ The manager asked me to squeeze it some more ’cause it looked great on the cameras. And that photograph became kind of legendary in Brazil. So I’m gonna do that song (‘Revelations’) down in Brazil. And I thought, ‘Hell, if I’m gonna rehearse ‘Revelations’ for Brazil, oh, damn it, I might as well do it in the USA as well.’ So I think that’d be kind of cool. We’re not playing it on this next tour, this next MAIDEN tour. And I think because it’s my song, if I wanna tweak a few things and make a few little alterations that I think might maybe make it a little bit better, then, yeah, it’s my song. I’ll do what I damn well like.”
Joining the IRON MAIDEN singer on the “The Mandrake Project Live 2025” North American tour will once again be his 2024 backing band, featuring Dave Moreno (drums),Mistheria (keyboards) and Tanya O’Callaghan (bass),alongside the group’s latest additions, Swedish guitarist, songwriter and multi-platinum-credited producer Philip Näslund and Swiss session and touring guitarist Chris Declercq (who played on Dickinson‘s “Rain On The Graves” single). Bruce‘s longtime guitarist and collaborator Roy “Z” Ramirez is not part of the touring lineup.
In 1994, having left IRON MAIDEN for a time (he rejoined in 1999), Bruce Dickinson released his second solo album, titled “Balls To Picasso”. Named in honor of the cubist pioneer whose representations of spherical objects were as squares, and reflected on the cover in graffiti style on a tiled bathroom wall, the album belied its irreverent title by solidifying Dickinson‘s reputation as a serious solo artist.
His first record with collaborator Roy “Z” Ramirez, and recorded with Z‘s band TRIBE OF GYPSIES, it went through various iterations before its release, produced by Shay Baby. The original album contained a number of classic tracks and live favorites from Dickinson, including the singles “Tears Of The Dragon” and “Shoot All The Clowns”, alongside the much-loved epic “Laughing In The Hiding Bush”, which was the original title for the album.
Yet despite its positive reception at the time, it never quite captured Dickinson‘s original vision which was even more expansive in scope and ambition. However, with the ability to revisit his solo catalog — and following on from Dickinson‘s hugely acclaimed album “The Mandrake Project” in 2024 — the brand new part re-recorded, remixed and newly mastered version of the album, now titled “More Balls To Picasso”, reimagines it as a fresh and contemporary release; a roaringly full-throttle and ambitious collection of supremely crafted and realized songs.
Dickinson says of it: “While mixing all my catalogue into Dolby Atmos I had a nagging desire to revisit and reinvent the record. So putting more balls into ‘Balls…’ was a labor of love. Of course, we beefed up the guitars — courtesy of our ‘Swedish shredder’ Philip Näslund — and we added some really beautiful work by Adassi Addasi on ‘Tears…’ as well. Fellow Brazilian composer Antonio Teoli added some stunning orchestral arrangements, and in a unique contribution, added indigenous instruments from the Amazon (recorded by himself when he lived there!) at the beginning of ‘Gods Of War’.
“‘Shoot All The Clowns’ gets the benefit of a horn section fronted by the Berklee College Of Music, and all of the record gets the benefit of the mix by Brendan Duffey, (who worked on ‘The Mandrake Project’), with notes along the way from Shay Baby, the original father of the album.”
Additionally, “More Balls To Picasso” includes two previously unreleased live-in-the-studio tracks, “Gods Of War” and “Shoot All The Clowns”. It will be available as a splatter vinyl double album and tri-panel digisleeve CD album.
“More Balls To Picasso” track listing:
01. Cyclops
02. Hell No
03. Gods Of War
04. 1000 Points Of Light
05. Laughing In The Hiding Bush
06. Change Of Heart
07. Shoot All The Clowns
08. Fire
09. Sacred Cowboys
10. Tears Of The Dragon
11. Gods Of War(live in the studio)*
12. Shoot All The Clowns (live in the studio)*
* Previously unreleased
DICKINSON‘s solo most recent solo recording, “The Mandrake Project“ arrived on March 1, 2024 via BMG.
Now, Z2 is proud to announce the impending release of “The Mandrake Project: Year One” on August 5, 2025, which collects the first four issues in the series, along with the prologue (previously only available in the vinyl release of the single for “The Afterglow Of Ragnarok”). Additionally, the oversized 12″x12″, 184-page volume deluxe editions include an extensive series of interviews and essays recounting the road Dickinson and the creative team took in bringing the album, tour, and comic series to life. With an introduction by “Sons Of Anarchy” creator Kurt Sutter, the book is housed in an exquisite slipcase with a rotating embossed Mandrake dial and is bound with a sealing ribbon and gilt paper edging. The case also contains four exclusive foil collectors cards and the cast metal “The Mandrake Project” medallion seen in the comic and music videos.
“The Mandrake Project” is a dark, adult story of power, abuse and a struggle for identity, set against the backdrop of scientific and occult genius. Created by Dickinson, the comic series is scripted by Tony Lee and stunningly illustrated by Staz Johnson for Z2 Comics.
When asked about the book’s release, Dickinson said: “Finally we are at the end of the beginning. I honestly have to pinch myself to believe that Volume 1 of ‘The Mandrake Project’ is upon us. I sometimes get the feeling that I am not fully in control of the story, and that some other entity is squeezing the blood out of my subconscious and turning it into ink on the page before my very eyes. We are just getting going. We are all… formed… of the dead.”
In May 2024, Dickinson became a patron of the William Blake Cottage Trust, which owns and preserves William Blake‘s only surviving house. In homage to the storyline and with total reverence for “The Mandrake Project”‘s inspiration, the Z2 team collected soil from the grave of the legendary English artist and poet, which was mixed into the ink for the printing of “The Mandrake Project: Year One” Deluxe Editions.
Bruce added: “William Blake has given me so much over the years and I want to repay the debt by helping to restore the Cottage. Despite his impact on the world, there is no center for Blake, nowhere people can visit to see where he actually lived and worked during a key part of his life. I want to change this.”
The oversized 12″x12″ Deluxe Edition with spinning slipcase and the limited, signed platinum edition will only be available directly from Z2 at Z2Comics.com, while a 9″x9″ smaller hardcover edition without slipcase will be available via Z2‘s retail partners Amazon and Barnes & Noble in the United States, and at HMV UK (Exclusive HMV Cover + Trading Card),as well as many independent comic and music shops worldwide.
When asked about “The Mandrake Project: Year One”, Z2‘s editor-in-chief Rantz Hoseley shared: “You pray for collaborators like Bruce Dickinson. While we’ve always taken pride in the presentation and production of our books, Bruce challenged us to exceed our previous best, and we happily took that challenge on. The end result is a design so ambitious and lush it’ll make your jaw drop, and we cannot wait to have you dive into this beautiful beast of a book!”
Preorder yours today at Z2comics.com/BruceDickinson.
This summer Dickinson takes “The Mandrake Project” on the road for his first extensive North American solo tour in almost 30 years.
A year ago, Bruce told Side Jams With Bryan Reesman that his favorite American superheroes growing up were Doctor Strange, the Silver Surfer and the Human Torch. Dickinson explained: “As an adolescent, the Silver Surfer is just pissed off about everything in general, but always permanently. And that was me, you know? And then Dr. Strange, he can control everything. And as an adolescent, I can control nothing. So I was, like, ‘I want to be him.’ And then I didn’t know anything about girls, but the Human Torch can set fire to himself. He could fly. And all the girls were, like, ‘Yeah, I want to jump his bones.’ I’m, like, ‘I want to be him too.’ Those were my three comic go-tos.”
Bruce said he bought up a lot of back issues of “Doctor Strange” and “Silver Surfer” at a comic book shop in Chicago before he began working on the new series a decade ago.
“By the time I went to Z2, who were already working with MAIDEN on the ‘Piece Of Mind’ comic, I said, ‘Look, I’ve got this crazy idea. You’re probably going to throw me out because you’ve got too much on your plate. But how do you fancy doing a ‘Watchmen’-style comic?'” Dickinson told “Side Jam”. “And I think they thought it was just going to be like one page. When I gave them 20 or 30 pages of synopsis and script and character sketches and backstory and world, they were’ like, ‘This is really cool.’ That’s when they put me in touch with Tony Lee. I was doing the story for ‘Revelations’, and Tony and I did the script together. I realized then (that a) comic script is not like any other kind of script I’ve ever written. This is a whole different world, a whole different regime, even the dialogue. Now I could do dialogue that would maybe work in a screenplay, and sometimes it would work in a comic. But other times it wouldn’t work in a comic. I would never have written something like that. I would have done something more wordy. It’s getting the feel of where dialogue’s going and getting the feel of where the frame sits on the page.”
“The Mandrake Project” album was released in March 2024 via BMG. Bruce and his long-term co-writer and producer Roy “Z” Ramirez recorded the LP 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 keyboard maestro Mistheria and drummer Dave Moreno, both of whom also featured on Bruce‘s previous solo studio album, “Tyranny Of Souls”, in 2005.
In November 2023, Bruce told Brazil’s Omelete about the lyrical concept for “The Mandrake Project”: “So ‘The Mandrake Project’ is, one, is an album. It’s the name of the album. The comic is a 12-episode graphic novel, kind of adult. There’s lots of stuff in it — there’s lots of sex and drugs and violence and all kinds of stuff. But it’s basically a story about a guy who is looking for his identity, Dr. Necropolis. He’s an orphan, he’s a genius, and he hates it, and he hates life, but he’s involved in The Mandrake Project. And The Mandrake Project aims to take the human soul at the point of death, capture it, store it and put it back in something else. And the guy that’s running the project, Professor Lazarus, he has one vision of what’s gonna happen with this technology, and Necropolis has other ideas. And on we go with the story.”
Asked how he came up with the idea to mash together music and comics, Bruce said: “Well, I think they do kind of go together. They really do. Music and games, music and comics, comics and games, they’re all related.”
He continued: “Years ago, IRON MAIDEN, we were doing some cover art, and I said, ‘Why don’t we do a comic?’, like the comics that I used to read when I was a kid… When I suggested doing some covers, comic covers, we did some single artwork for IRON MAIDEN, and I thought, ‘You know what? This is kind of cool.’ Then later, MAIDEN had a video game called ‘Legacy Of The Beast’; we still do. But what came with a video game, somebody produced a series of comics. And I thought they looked fantastic, but they lacked a story. And that got me thinking, what if you had an album that had a story that could be turned into a comic and the two things would work together? As it happened, they’ve actually grown apart. So, the (original) album, in 2014, was gonna be one comic with the album — that’s it. Then, COVID happened, other things happened, seven years went by, and I had a 12-episode graphic novel. And I went, ‘I don’t wanna restrict the album to being like a script for this.’ These two things exist separately, but they inform each other. So you can look at the album and go, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s kind of related to the comic.’ And you look at the comic and go, ‘Oh, I see that might be a little bit related to the album,’ but they’re not dependent on each other. So you can buy the comic or you can buy the album — or both.”
Dickinson‘s studio album, “The Mandrake Project”, was released on March 1, 2024 via BMG. Across ten inventive, expansive, and absorbing tracks, Bruce and his long-term co-writer and producer Roy “Z” Ramirez have created one of 2024’s defining rock albums. Sonically heavy and rich in musical textures, it sees Bruce bring to life a musical vision long in the making and features some of the finest vocal performances of his career. “The Mandrake Project” is not just an album, but a dark, adult story of power, abuse, and a struggle for identity, set against the backdrop of scientific and occult genius.
The battle for immortality begins with “Bruce Dickinson’s The Mandrake Project” #1 available at comic retailers and direct from Z2Comics.com on January 17, 2024. The large-sized 9.35″ x 9:35″ 36-page single issue with cardstock cover is priced at $10 and arrives in a sealed bag with a first-printing certificate of authenticity — the first of a 12-issue run arriving quarterly over the course of the next three years, including annual trade paperbacks every fall. Release dates for 2024 and 2025 as follows:
* “The Mandrake Project” #1 – January 17, 2024
* “The Mandrake Project” #2 – March 20, 2024
* “The Mandrake Project” #3 – June 26, 2024
* “The Mandrake Project” #4 – September 25, 2024
* “The Mandrake Project” #2 – March 20, 2024
* “The Mandrake Project” #3 – June 26, 2024
* “The Mandrake Project” #4 – September 25, 2024
* “The Mandrake Project” #7 – June 25, 2025
* “The Mandrake Project” #8 – September 24, 2025
* “The Mandrake Project” annual trade paperback #2 – November 5, 2025
“Bruce Dickinson’s The Mandrake Project” #1 (of 12)
* Story by Bruce Dickinson
* Script by Tony Lee
* Art by Staz Johnson
* Letters by Troy Peteri
* Colors by Gabo
* Covers by Bill Sienkiewicz
Bruce Dickinson has recently released the official music video for his new solo single, “Afterglow Of Ragnarok”. The Ryan Mackfall-directed motion picture short is based on the graphic novel written by Dickinson and Tony Lee and features original artwork by Staz Johnson. “Afterglow Of Ragnarok” is the first single from the IRON MAIDEN singer’s upcoming solo album, “The Mandrake Project”, which will arrive in early 2024 via BMG.
“It was important to set the tone of the project with this track,” Dickinson explains. “As befitting its title, it’s a heavy song and there’s a great big riff driving it…but there’s also a real melody in the chorus that displays the light and shade that the rest of the album brings… and just wait until you see the video!”
“The Mandrake Project” is a dark, adult story of power, abuse and a struggle for identity, set against the backdrop of scientific and occult genius. Created by Dickinson, scripted by Tony Lee and stunningly illustrated by Staz Johnson for Z2 Comics, the series features 12 episodes that collect into three graphic novels and will be launched in 2024.
An eight-page comic prequel to “The Mandrake Project”, titled “Afterglow Of Ragnarok”, is included within the vinyl seven-inch single booklet which accompanies the single of the same name and sets the scene for the story to come. The seven-inch single also features Dickinson‘s original solo demo version of the song “If Eternity Should Fail”, which first appeared on IRON MAIDEN‘s album “The Book Of Souls” in 2015.
Having already announced Brazilian and Mexican live dates for April and May next year, Dickinson and his phenomenal band — which features guitarist Roy “Z” Ramirez, drummer Dave Moreno, bass player Tanya O’Callaghan and keyboard maestro Mistheria — will continue their touring with a run of European shows, alongside a number of festival appearances in Europe. The currently confirmed dates are below.
“The Mandrake Project” European tour
May 18 – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow, UK
May 19 – O2 Academy, Manchester, UK
May 21 – Arena, Swansea, UK
May 23 – Rock City, Nottingham, UK
May 24 – O2 Forum Kentish Town, London, UK
May 26 – L’Olympia, Paris, France
May 28 – 013, Tilburg, Holland
May 29 – De Oosterport, Groningen, Holland
June 1 – Barba Negra, Budapest, Hungary
June 3 – Arenale Romane, Bucharest, Romania
June 5-8 – Mystic Festival, Gdansk, Poland *
June 5-8 – Sweden Rock Festival, Sölvesborg, Sweden *
June 9 – Rockefeller, Oslo, Norway
June 16 – Huxleys Neue Welt, Berlin, Germany
June 17 – Grosse Freiheit 36, Hamburg, Germany
June 19-22 – Copenhell, Copenhagen, Denmark *
June 24 – Zeltfestival Rhein-Neckar, Mannheim, Germany *
June 25 – Circus Krone, Munich, Germany
June 27-30 – Hellfest, Clisson, France *
June 30 – Rockhal, Esch-Sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
July 3-6 – Rockharz Open Air, Ballenstedt, Germany *
July 5 – Ippodrome Delle Capannelle, Rock In Rome, Rome, Italy *
July 6 – Bassano Del Grappa, Metal Park, Vincenza, Italy *
July 9 – E-Werk, Koln, Germany
July 13 – Hala, Zagreb, Croatia
July 16 – Kolodrum Arena, Sofia, Bulgaria
July 19 – Kucukciftlik Park, Istanbul, Turkey
* Festival performance
Bruce Dickinson has released a video message earlier this year in which he offered a bit more information about his upcoming solo album, due in early 2024 on BMG. Titled “The Mandrake Project”, it sees him reunited with long-time musical collaborator and producer Roy “Z” Ramirez.
“The Mandrake Project” will be Dickinson‘s seventh solo album and his first since “Tyranny Of Souls” in 2005.
Bruce said: “So, everybody, everybody on the planet who’s been going, ‘Oh my god. What’s this solo thing gonna be all about when it finally happens?’ Well, it’s finally happening. It’s called ‘The Mandrake Project’, and’ of course, it’s music. But, it’s also much, much, more. More than that, I’m not gonna reveal for now, ’cause it will become self-explanatory and self-evident as we go through and reveal more layers of the onion for you all.”
He continued: “But, yeah, ‘The Mandrake Project’. We’ve been working on this since 2014, when it wasn’t called ‘The Mandrake Project’. And it’s had time to grow and mature. And, oh my God, has it ever. I think you will be really, really excited. And, I hope you love everything that we’ve created for you.”
When “The Mandrake Project” was first announced in September, Dickinson said in a statement: “This album has been a very personal journey for me and I am extremely proud of it. Roy Z and I have been planning, writing and recording it for years, and I am very excited for people to finally hear it. I’m even more excited at the prospect of getting out on the road with this amazing band that we have put together, to be able to bring it to life. We’re planning to play as many shows as we can in as many places as possible, for as many people as we can! As for what ‘The Mandrake Project’ actually is… all will be revealed soon!”
In March 2022, Bruce told Consequence about his next solo album: “I’ve been working on it, on and off, since ‘Tyranny Of Souls’. But between lockdowns and albums and MAIDEN tours and everything else, I’m looking for a clear space to actually nail and say, ‘Okay, this is what it’s gonna be,’ and get Roy to put some backing tracks down. And then we can do it. So we’re at the point now where we’ve already got — I don’t know — anywhere between 50 and 70 percent of the material for the album, depend(ing) on what we pick, from things we’ve already got. And I think we’d like to tweak it a little bit.”
Back in December 2017, Dickinson said that his next solo LP would likely include a reworked version of “If Eternity Should Fail”, the opening track on IRON MAIDEN‘s 2015 disc “The Book Of Souls”. At the time, he said that he had about “half” of his seventh record already written and he also confirmed that “If Eternity Should Fail” was originally penned as a Dickinson solo track.
He told Finland’s Kaaos TV that the original plan was for his next solo record to be “a whole concept album, which was gonna be called ‘If Eternity Should Fail’. And ‘If Eternity Should Fail’ was the title track to my new solo album,” he said. “And a bit like (Dickinson‘s 1989 solo song) ‘Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter’ (laughs), it got commandeered for IRON MAIDEN. So if I did do another solo album, which I think I will, I might just stick to my original plan and have that as the title track. I mean, I did write it — it was the first track that I wrote for it. So, yeah, I’d probably still include that song. But it would be… the feel would be slightly different — not very much, though — from the MAIDEN version.”
In 2015, Dickinson told France’s Hard Force magazine that “If Eternity Should Fail” ended up being used by IRON MAIDEN after bassist Steve Harris heard the demos that Bruce was working on for what was supposed to be his next solo album. “And (Steve) went, ‘That’s a really cool song. Can we use that? That’s gonna be the opening song on the album,'” he recalled. “And I went, ‘Yeah, okay.’ And he was already writing, I think… He was already thinking of ‘The Book Of Souls’ as being the title, so he told me about the Mayan thing. And I’m, like, ‘Yeah, that’s cool. Okay. Yeah, I see where you’re going.’ But in my case, that song was written as part of a story. So the spoken word at the end is the beginning of a story that goes through the whole album. And one of the characters is Dr. Necropolis; he’s the bad guy. And the good guy is Professor Lazarus; he raises people from the dead. So that introduces Necropolis in the spoken-word thing. And I asked Steve… I said, ‘Look. Okay. I get having the song…’ ‘Cause it opens up with, ‘Here is the soul of a man.’ ‘Yup. Get that. But what about the end?’ I said, ‘Will people understand what this is about? Because this is nothing to do with the Mayans or anything. This is to do with… I’d come up with a concept album that doesn’t happen.’ (Laughs) And he went, ‘No, no, no. It’s just talking about souls and everything, and it sounds great.’ I went, ‘Okay.’ (Laughs)”
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. Since then, Dickinson has only released one more solo album (the aforementioned “Tyranny Of Souls”) but has previously said that his solo career is not over.
In September 2021 IRON MAIDEN released their last full album ‘Senjutsu’, for which the band currently is out on a world tour.
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