Iron Maiden Returns With “The Writing On The Wall”

Six years since the release of their last album, legendary British heavy metal group Iron Maiden released a new track titled "The Writing On The Wall" on July 15th. 

The new song, written by frontman Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith, comes paired with a superb animated music video of epic biblical proportions. 

Having a comparatively slower tempo than the band's previous works, The Writing On The Wall wonderfully portrays the story of a post-apocalyptic world, devastated by the upper class. Engulfed by suffering, when a commoner tries to surpass the barrier to a place the rich have created for themselves, he gets destroyed by a power from above.

The opening riffs of the track lean towards the southern rock genre but as the song progresses and Dickinson's vocals kick in, the song comes back leaping squarely into Maiden territory. 

With founder Steve Harris on the bass, guitars by Dave Murry and Janick Gers, and Nicko McBrain on the drums, the song carries similar weight to some of Maiden's other tracks despite being only over six minutes long.

The animated video, made in collaboration with Pixar's Mark Andrews and Andrew Gordon (Finding Nemo, Brave, Incredibles) and London-based BlinkInk animation studios, represents the lyrics perfectly and portrays the words into a video with biblical references and numerous Easter eggs, as the animators themselves are huge Maiden fans.

The video features the band's mascot, Eddie, into a full-fledged 3D samurai version which is both cool and highly nostalgic in itself. One has to watch the video to truly appreciate the well-crafted animation.

Seeing the music video and hearing the song, thinking that the song is trying to portray a story of our future, if we stay on the current path we're in right now, is completely natural and impressingly as if, it's a call for building up the resistance against it. 

And that's because unlike the band's other work where they describe legendary battles, or a piece of history, here they take the story of Belshazzar's Feast from the Book of Daniel in the Bible and try to talk about something that's ahead of us. 

Speaking of Belshazzar's Feast, fans have been getting teasers for Writing On The Wall from Iron Maiden for a long time. From Bruce Dickinson wearing a Belshazzar's Feast t-shirt to teaser videos to an entire flyer in the recent Download Festival bearing the date "15/07" and the letters "IMXVII", fans were eagerly waiting for the 15th. 

Even more interestingly, fans believe that "IMXVII" references to Iron Maiden and 17 which hints to a new, seventeenth studio album from the group. That's very big news if it happens of course, after their last studio album release in 2015, The Book of Souls.

Whatever happens, it's pretty apparent that Iron Maiden isn't going anywhere, with the band itself being almost 50 years old and Bruce Dickinson being 62, recovering from cancer and still alive and kicking. 

New tours, new music and getting new generations of music enthusiasts into Iron Maiden and metal music everyday, this band is nowhere near its end.

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