Last Thursday, September 21 finally saw a long-awaited reveal, as Iron Maiden directly released information about Bruce Dickinson’s seventh solo album. It is titled The Mandrake Project and is slated for an “early 2024” release. More specific information will be forthcoming, of course.

In addition to the album, Bruce has also announced a small run of solo shows in Mexico and Brazil in late April and early May of next year, giving us a guess that the album will release sometime before that small tour.

This is Bruce’s first solo record in a long time – have to go back to 2005’s Tyranny Of Souls for the last one. It’s also only his second one since returning to Iron Maiden in 1999, clearly his main gig and host of other jobs like flying, beer selling and sword fighting keeps him busy.

Not much music has been made available yet, there is a small snippet of instruments in a video on Iron Maiden’s social media pages but that’s all for now. I’d expect a full song to be previewed soon, maybe when the release date is revealed.

There also isn’t a whole lot to say about the upcoming album yet, other than Bruce is again working with his longtime collaborator Roy Z. That’s good news to anyone attuned to Bruce’s solo outings, as Roy Z helped craft some amazing albums with Bruce.

We can also speculate that one song we already know will appear on the album. Bruce has been working on a concept album for years, dating back to when Iron Maiden recorded The Book Of Souls album that released in 2015. That opening track, If Eternity Should Fail, was originally written by Bruce and intended for this new solo record when Steve Harris heard it and asked for it to be on the Maiden record instead. In fact, the somewhat incoherent babbling about “Necropolis” and all that at the end of the song is a tie-in to the story for this Bruce solo album. While nothing official has been said yet, I’d place bets that If Eternity Should Fail winds up on here too, though I’m sure it would be a redone version of it.

There’s not much else to do right now but sit and wait, this will be a highly anticipated release for me. Well, I guess there is one more thing we can do and that’s gawk at that somewhat awkward promo photo, with Bruce totally photoshopped over a mystical alien door of some kind. I’m assuming and hoping that’s just a promo photo and not the true album cover, a bit of chatter in spots on social media seem to support that theory. People have had a field day with this shot, some even remarking that it’s as bad as the infamous cover to Dance Of Death. I think this is a goofy photo but it’s not anywhere near the level of bad that Dance Of Death has for a cover.

Now with that out of the way, I truly can sit and wait for more news and some previews of this new Bruce album. It’s been a long time and I’m looking forward to another entry in his outstanding solo catalog.