{"id":710613,"date":"2026-07-25T14:32:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T14:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/710613\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T14:32:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T14:32:18","slug":"iron-maiden-the-story-behind-senjustu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/710613\/","title":{"rendered":"Iron Maiden: the story behind Senjustu"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iron Maiden<\/a> finished recording their 17th studio album Senjutsu<\/a> in 2019 \u2013but it spent two years locked away on a laptop due to the pandemic. In 2021, with the album finally about to be released, Bruce Dickinson<\/a> and Janick Gers revealed the story behind Maiden\u2019s most epic album.<\/p>\n

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\"Classic\n<\/p>\n

The last 18 months have been a nightmare of frustration and cancelled plans for most musicians, but imagine being Bruce Dickinson.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When Hammer meets the Iron Maiden singer in London, as the band prepare to unveil their 17th studio album, he has a restless, fiery look in his eyes. Dressed, as has become traditional, in the leisurewear of a dedicated cyclist – dark, plain vest; joggers – he greets us with some expected cheery enthusiasm. But as we unzip the monstrous wonders of the album in question, the mighty Senjutsu, it becomes increasingly obvious that Bruce has been going slightly mad waiting for the world to open up again.<\/p>\n

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The last time we spoke to him on the eve of the release of a new Maiden album (2015\u2019s The Book Of Souls<\/a>), he cut a relaxed and relieved figure, the spectre of his battle with throat cancer then receding into the distance. But today, Bruce is visibly excited about what comes next, not least because it turns out that Iron Maiden have been sitting on Senjutsu since 2019. No wonder that he is so clearly delighted that we\u2019ve just been granted a sneak preview of the full album. He leans forward in his chair and grins.<\/p>\n

\u201cGood, isn\u2019t it?\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Yes, mate. It\u2019s fucking great.<\/p>\n

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\"Iron\n<\/p>\n

Iron Maiden\u2019s Bruce Dickinson in 1981 (Image credit: John McMurtrie)<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, but due to some very obvious logistical reasons, the legendary Brits\u2019 17th studio record has been gathering dust in a can, quite conceivably in some obscure, subterranean vault and guarded by Eddie<\/a>\u2019s snarling minions, for the best part of two years. Recorded once again at Guillaume Tell Studio in Paris, with long-time collaborator Kevin Shirley manning the controls, Senjutsu came together during a brief pause in live activity following the first part of Maiden\u2019s wildly acclaimed Legacy Of The Beast<\/a> world tour.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe plan was to have the album out at the end of Legacy Part 2, which was then postponed, and then postponed again,\u201d Bruce grimaces. \u201cSo we\u2019d already made the fucking record and then we went on tour, knowing that we\u2019d made it! Nicko came into the studio, before we started making it, all grumpy, saying, \u2018What the fuck are we making a record for? Fuck me, I was on holiday!\u2019 Ha ha ha! So we just said that we might as well do it, and thank Christ we did, because the whole world went to shit shortly after the end of the tour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iron Maiden played their last pre-pandemic live show in Santiago, Chile, on October 15, 2019. As deeply unpleasant events unfolded around the world, it swiftly became apparent that there would be no further opportunities to complete the Legacy Of The Beast tour for some time. Perhaps even longer than certain people expected.<\/p>\n

Iron Maiden \u2013 The Writing On The Wall (Official Video) – YouTube
\n\"Iron<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI was in lockdown, initially in Paris,\u201d says Bruce. \u201cI\u2019m sat on the balcony in Paris, it was a lovely sunny day in March, it was a heatwave and super-hot. I remember talking to Rod [Smallwood, longtime Iron Maiden manager] and I said, \u2018We should do some facemasks!\u2019 and he said, \u2018Nooooo, we\u2019re never gonna do facemasks! This\u2019ll all blow over!\u2019 Ha ha ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

What to read next<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, as global chaos erupted, Iron Maiden had a brand new studio album that they really had to keep secret. And so, they did – secret even from themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of the recording, everybody else had fucked off home, so it was basically me, Steve [Harris] and Kevin in the studio,\u201d Bruce recalls. \u201cWe played it back a couple of times, said, \u2018Yeah, that\u2019s alright then!\u2019 and then that was the last time I heard it for nearly two years. All of us! Nobody in the band had a copy! Steve, in particular, was so paranoid that someone would leak it onto the internet, and probably with some justification, it was locked up in a vault.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe next time I heard the album was when we were mixing the Mexico live stuff [2020\u2019s live album, Nights Of The Dead]. I went round to Steve\u2019s, and I said, \u2018You haven\u2019t got a copy of the album, have you?\u2019 and he said, \u2018I think it\u2019s on my laptop!\u2019 And he had only played it a couple of times. He hadn\u2019t heard it for ages either, so we said, \u2018Fuck it, put it on the big speakers!\u2019 That was when I was thinking, \u2018Shit a brick, this is good.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Iron\n<\/p>\n

Iron Maiden\u2019s Steve Harris (Image credit: John McMurtrie)<\/p>\n

Bruce is perfectly correct, too. Maiden fans have become accustomed to studio albums of high quality, particularly over the band\u2019s triumphant last 20 years, and yet Senjutsu sounds and feels somehow bigger, better and more emotionally potent than anything the band have recorded since Bruce and guitarist Adrian Smith returned to the fold in 1999, re-joining bassist Steve Harris, drummer Nicko McBrain and guitarists Dave Murray and Janick Gers as an absurdly successful new decade dawned.<\/p>\n

Significantly, it is also an album that brims with surprises, albeit all very much filtered through that instantly recognisable Maiden bombast. From the monstrous, rumbling storm of the opening title track and the hazy, proggy grooves of The Time Machine, to the bluesy stomp\u2019n\u2019squall of first single The Writing On The Wall and The Parchment\u2019s prog-fuelled labyrinth of riffs and spiralling melodies, Senjutsu delivers more of the glorious, classic Maiden same and numerous curveballs at the same time.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe nice thing is to still be able to think outside the box a little bit,\u201d Bruce notes. \u201cThe Writing On The Wall is a great choice for the first single, and another cool thing is that it is in no way indicative of the rest of the album. It should be called \u2018The Writing Off The Wall\u2019! Ha ha ha!\u201d<\/p>\n

Iron Maiden – Stratego (Official Video) – YouTube
\n\"Iron<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

But somehow it still sounds like Maiden and couldn\u2019t be anybody else. Does it give you a collective thrill, that you can still do something different like that?<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, exactly. It still sounds like us. When Adrian and I sort of put the song together, Adrian had the riff, because Adrian always has the riff. Then off we went. I put the melody over it and the words, and it\u2019s just one of those songs that wrote itself, almost. We were like, \u2018Is this going to fly?\u2019 but \u2019Arry [Steve] loved it. He said, \u2018Yeah, I quite like that sort of Cajun feel!\u2019 We both looked at each other, like, \u2018Cajun?! Alright, fair enough!\u2019 Ha ha ha! But it\u2019s got a great feel to it. You might think you\u2019ve wandered into a fucking Thunder record or something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Until the drums kick in\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cOh yeah, the drumming on the whole album is ridiculous. It\u2019s so good. Honestly? I think it\u2019s the best Nicko\u2019s ever drummed. Honest to god, going all the way back to Piece Of Mind and Powerslave, I don\u2019t think he\u2019s ever drummed better. He\u2019s just so on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Iron\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: John McMurtrie)<\/p>\n

Although not quite as desperate to be let off the leash as his notoriously chill-deficient frontman, six-stringer Janick Gers is in a comparably buoyant mood when Hammer speaks with him for another Senjutsu debrief a week later. Endearingly, in the midst of the last two years\u2019 abject mayhem, the veteran guitarist has missed out on a couple of major milestones.<\/p>\n

Late in 2019, he somehow completely failed to celebrate being a member of Iron Maiden (and continually whacking Eddie in the bollocks with his guitar) for 30 years. Meanwhile, he sounds genuinely startled to find that Senjutsu is his 10th Maiden studio record.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, Janick is very, very enthusiastic about the new record and makes a point of saying how much he enjoyed the process of making it, \u201ceven if it seems a long time ago now!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally we would come in and rehearse for a few weeks, so we pretty much have all the songs,\u201d he continues. \u201cEvery now and then we\u2019ve gone in with an extra song or an extra set of ideas, and we\u2019ve worked them up in the studio, but this time we learned them and played them, as fresh as we could. We have a band with so many ideas, everyone\u2019s bringing things in and everyone\u2019s trying to make every song better. There\u2019s a real camaraderie about how we write as a band. Everyone wants it to be the best. It\u2019s just exciting. Isn\u2019t that how it should be? Rather than coming in and knowing exactly what\u2019s coming next? You never know what\u2019s coming next from Maiden and that\u2019s part of the strength of the band.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iron Maiden – Death Of The Celts (Official Audio) – YouTube
\n\"Iron<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

Maiden\u2019s collective enthusiasm for trying new ideas and gently tinkering with the band\u2019s esteemed formula seems to have gained momentum in recent times. Senjutsu may not feature anything quite as ambitious or extravagant as The Book Of Souls\u2019 18-minute epic, Empire Of The Clouds, but its adventurous spirit is brashly on display throughout.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, we\u2019re always looking for different avenues,\u201d notes Janick. \u201cWe\u2019re treading the Maiden path and whatever we do sounds like us. It doesn\u2019t matter what you bring in. It\u2019s always worth bringing something in, even if you\u2019re thinking, \u2018Nah, it\u2019s not right for Maiden\u2026\u2019! By the time you\u2019ve finished playing it with Nicko, with the way he plays and how Steve plays his bass, and the way Dave and Adrian play, it\u2019s all just very natural. We don\u2019t sit and work a lot of stuff out, we just play and it seems to gel. No one has to be told what to do, and it all comes out sounding like Maiden.\u201d<\/p>\n

Janick has two writing credits on the new album: the short, sharp and catchy Stratego and the woozy, menacing The Time Machine, both co-written with Steve Harris. But it\u2019s the sheer open-ended, creative free-for-all that Maiden continue to enjoy in the studio that seems to delight him the most.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just think we still surprise each other. I\u2019ve never been in a band with so many ideas. There are so many ideas flowing in all the time, and so many that never get used! When you look at the amount of stuff that\u2019s on this album\u2026 in the past, an album would be 40 minutes long. These are like triple albums!\u201d<\/p>\n

And do you agree with Bruce that Nicko is on particularly brilliant form on this album?<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, yes, Nicko is playing great. He\u2019s a powerhouse,\u201d Janick replies. \u201cHe powers the band. He pushes the band. He\u2019s got an incredible personality \u2013there\u2019s about five of him I think! Ha ha ha! But he\u2019s incredible. You need that powerhouse behind you. He\u2019s 70 next year? He\u2019s playing like a teen. It\u2019s incredible. I\u2019ve never heard him so solid. I don\u2019t think you can tour, the way we\u2019ve toured over the years, and not be fit. If your mind\u2019s clear and you\u2019re fit and healthy, then you\u2019re playing better and being creative. So we\u2019re all fit\u2026 for old men\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Iron\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: John McMurtrie)<\/p>\n

At just under 82 minutes long and rammed to the gills with epic, exhilarating moments, Senjutsu is an album that will doubtless tick every conceivable box for discerning fans of Iron Maiden. But there are numerous moments when the band sound more fiercely imaginative than ever before.<\/p>\n

Again, the opening title track stands out as particularly astonishing: palpably heavier than anything Maiden have recorded in the past, and yet graced with a soaring vocal performance from Bruce that will definitely cause grown metalheads to become a bit misty-eyed. It\u2019s no kind of typical Maiden song, and yet could not be the work of anyone else, right down to Steve Harris\u2019s hazily cryptic tales of \u2013 we think – threatened imperial walls and swarming, warring tribes in ancient Japan.<\/p>\n

\u201cSteve picked that as the title track. I don\u2019t know why, but he suddenly got bitten by the Japanese bug,\u201d Bruce states. \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to find out the origin of the word \u2018Senjutsu\u2019 and there seem to be multiple variants, but as far as Steve\u2019s concerned, it means \u2018The Art Of War\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut to be honest, I don\u2019t really care. It\u2019s a good excuse for chopping things up with samurai swords! The album is not a concept album. The cover has a concept and it\u2019s Eddie as a samurai, so that\u2019s great. I love his transformation into a samurai in the video. But the rest of the album? It\u2019s not a concept album about that at all. It\u2019s a collection of different songs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Iron Maiden – Stratego (Live) [Legacy of the Beast Tour 2023-24] – YouTube
\n\"Iron<\/p>\n

Watch On <\/a><\/p>\n

And what songs they are. Noticeably dominated by notions of war and death, Senjutsu seems to exhibit some form of faint kinship with 2006\u2019s A Matter Of Life And Death: for many, the pick of Maiden\u2019s post-millennial studio albums, and another record with a prevailing atmosphere of war-torn dread. Bruce is eager to point out that Senjutsu was all written and recorded before the pandemic, and so if the new songs seem to reflect ongoing dark times, it is more due to (un)happy coincidence than anything more deliberate.<\/p>\n

Instead, Maiden continue to demonstrate how it is still possible to conjure universal themes that resonate widely, even in an increasingly divided age. Notably, the melancholic and brooding Darkest Hour delves into the achievements and personal turmoil of no lesser figure than Winston Churchill, with results that are poignant, unsettling and proudly representative of the human experience in all its infinitely complex and daunting splendour.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, Churchill is a case in point,\u201d says Bruce. \u201cYou\u2019ve got somebody who was a very flawed character. He suffered from depression, he was probably a functioning alcoholic. But at the one time when it actually mattered, he stood up, when other people would\u2019ve rolled over. You\u2019ve got to be prepared to fight sometimes, for what you believe in and for your freedom. Here was a man who was riddled with self-doubt, no matter what the external perception was.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of Maiden music seems to be about survival, resilience and heroism, and this album more than most\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of it is about self-sacrifice. It might be in a wartime environment or situation, but war brings out the worst and best in everything. From nuclear power stations to satellites, our entire modern world is largely based on what NASA and the Soviet Union developed in the space programme. The reason they developed it was not that they were just dreamers; it was because it was a pissing contest between two psychopathic empires! And you can\u2019t take the complexity out of human relations like that, unfortunately. We are what we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Maiden\u2019s reputation for writing songs about historical events and real-world battles, the band have also mined a rich seam of introspection and existential meandering over the last four decades. Outwardly, of course, Maiden are eternally invincible: undisputed gods of heavy metal<\/a>, revered around the world, and visibly having a rather lovely time doing it. But songs from the new album like Darkest Hour and grandiloquent finale Hell On Earth (the latter written by Steve Harris) continue to add to a palpable sense that both lyricists have experienced a few dark nights of the soul along the way.<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, the difference is, I suppose, that Steve and I would both rather put that into shows and albums than go onto chat shows and talk about it,\u201d Bruce counters. \u201cI know Steve has quite a deep-seated distrust of what we think of as being the modern world. To the extent that in Hell On Earth, the song is saying \u2018Are we done here yet? Can we just start again and I\u2019ll see you in another life, on the other side, when we\u2019ve all gone back to normal?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Iron\n<\/p>\n

(Image credit: John McMurtrie)<\/p>\n

So what exactly is normal at this point? A stunning new Iron Maiden album is definitely a good start. Some face-shredding live shows would also be nice, and those are coming too. Bruce has fully recovered from a recent hip replacement operation and is, in his own words, \u201cjumping around all over the place\u201d
in anticipation of a return to the stage. Maiden are back and it\u2019s all kicking off. That sounds pretty close to normal to us.<\/p>\n

\u201cSenjutsu hasn\u2019t been so long in the making, just long in the waiting!\u201d Bruce declares, sounding genuinely exasperated at it all. \u201cThis album is a step up. A Matter Of Life And Death was really good. I\u2019ve gone back and revisited it a little bit, and I thought, \u2018Shit, that was really good album.\u2019 With this one, I\u2019d go back to an album like Brave New World, which I think was a fantastic record. So I\u2019m really chuffed with this one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about going out and playing the same songs over and over again. If you\u2019re still creating stuff, then that\u2019s what makes you valid,\u201d Janick concludes. \u201cThere\u2019s always something new coming from Maiden. We\u2019re excited about doing it all again and getting back on the road. Sure, we\u2019re not getting any younger, and who knows about the future? But right now, we\u2019re creatively buzzing. I think we\u2019re still at the top of our game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 325 (August 2021)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iron Maiden finished recording their 17th studio album Senjutsu in 2019 \u2013but it spent two years locked away…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":710614,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-710613","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710613","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710613"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710613\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710613"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710613"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710613"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}