For weeks now Iron Maiden have been teasing something, firstly an invitation to Belshazzar’s Feast and more recently the letters WOTW started to appear online in previous album’s artwork. Finally, at 6pm tonight, the band ended weeks of speculation with not only their first new track in six years but a spectacular state of the art video to accompany “The Writing on the Wall”.
The track was written by guitarist Adrian Smith and lead singer Bruce Dickinson, produced by Kevin Shirley, and co-produced by Maiden bassist and founding member Steve Harris.
Now like many I was in shock as I’m not the only one who thought the announcement would be some live dates or a one-off festival performance which, don’t get me wrong, would’ve still been great. But deep down this Maiden fan of 30+ years wanted something new. Initially, I was taken aback with the premiere due to pure excitement so honestly, through the first watch, I felt like I was 10 and discovering the band all over again.
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The track itself starts off a little differently to what you might expect and has a Western feel to it, but injected within that is the familiar sound synonymous with maiden and before you even hear the chorus for the first time you’re in familiar territory.
At this point, I’ve had the track on repeat for a fair while but have to talk about the video as visually it’s stunning. It’s one of those videos that the more you watch the more you see, so many nods to the past. Not only that, which was just a nostalgia-fest for me personally, but it tells a great story. Oh, and we also got a new incarnation of Eddie!
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Bruce comments:
I’m very proud of the way the video turned out, it’s more like a mini-film really. I knew it was going to work out as soon as Mark brought my treatment to life with his incredible storyboards – I thought we could make something very special together. I think we did and hope our fans will agree. In fact it’s pretty much created by Maiden fans!
Unexpected, but undoubtedly Maiden through and through.
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