IRON MAIDEN’s official web site has been updated with the following message:
“Something of primal interest to all MAIDEN fans … Monday, January 2nd at 9 p.m. GMT [4 p.m. EST].”
The band added on Twitter, “It’s not a tour announcement and it’s not a DVD announcement either. It will be something brought to you by the letter H….”
IRON MAIDEN vocalist Bruce Dickinson told Daily Star last summer that the band will make “at least one more album” to follow 2010’s acclaimed “The Final Frontier”.
Dickinson revealed that the bandmembers often struggle during the songwriting process, explaining: “We try to keep things on an even keel. Being English, we still have some reserve when we’re communicating ideas to each other.
“[In the old days] we’d have a stand-up knock-down fight about anything. But we know each other better now and people do mellow.”
He added, “[When it’s time to write an album] we go off on our own, scribble ideas into our notebooks and come back to throw everything into the melting pot.
“We know the boundaries of what we can do musically.
“We’re not the kind of band who could say, ‘Hey, let’s do an album with Kanye West,’ because that wouldn’t interest MAIDEN fans at all.
“Things have been going a bit more prog-rock on our recent albums and the fans seem to love that.”
“The Final Frontier” sold 63,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to enter The Billboard 200 chart at position No. 4.
IRON MAIDEN’s previous album, 2006’s “A Matter Of Life And Death”, opened with 56,000 units to land at No. 9. This was a notable increase from the 40,000 first-week tally registered by its predecessor, 2003’s “Dance of Death” (which debuted at No. 18 on The Billboard 200 chart), and that of “Brave New World”, which moved 38,000 copies in June 2000 to land at No. 39 on The Billboard 200 chart.
“The Final Frontier” was IRON MAIDEN’s fourth U.K. No. 1 album. The band previously topped the chart in 1982 with “The Number of the Beast”, in 1988 with “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” and in 1992 with “Fear of the Dark”.
“The Final Frontier” was released in North America on August 17, 2010 via Universal Music Enterprises (UMe). The effort was made available in a unique limited-edition collectors’ “Mission Edition” CD case and features access to extra bonus content, including the director’s cut of a video for the edited version of the opening song on the album, entitled “Satellite 15… The Final Frontier”; band “Mission Debrief” interview footage; wallpapers; photos; and the exclusive game “Mission II : Rescue & Revenge”. MAIDEN also for the first time made the album available as an iTunes LP with bonus content as well as the traditional digital format. There is also a limited-edition double picture disc.
Source: www.blabbermouth.net