Iron Maiden Premiere New Song + Video, “Writing On the Wall”

We spent the week thinking we were getting a new Iron Maiden song called “Belshazzar’s Feast” as the prelude to a new Iron Maiden album, Writing On the Wall.

We were half-right!

The band has just released a new song called “Writing On the Wall”… but there’s no word on a new album.

That’s a bummer… but “Writing On the Wall” is pretty frickin’ epic, so let’s not bitch and moan too much.

It also comes with a cool animated music video, which Bruce Dickinson conceived in conjunction with former Pixar executives Mark Andrews and Andrew Gordon. It was eventually produced with the London-based animation studio BlinkInk, and includes the debut of the latest incarnation of Eddie. He’s a samurai now! I can’t believe it took them so long to think to do that!

Dickinson comments:

“I had a pretty clear idea of the concept to accompany the song and when I met Mark and Andrew, on Zoom, it quickly became clear we were all very much on the same wavelength, and this was reinforced with the addition of Nicos and his young BlinkInk team. Our weekly team Zoom meetings were then usually both highly creative and a lot of fun!  

“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!!”

Adds director Nicos Livesey:

“We quickly found the expertise we wanted, and people were literally throwing themselves at me to work on a Maiden video – we had more than 60 people in 13 countries from Brazil to France, & Romania to the U.S.A. to add something to the clip and I’d say their love, passion and understanding of the band shines through every frame. They were a dream team for the producers and myself to manage.” 

Check out “Writing on the Wall” below. The song was written by Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith & lead singer Bruce Dickinson, produced by Kevin Shirley and co-produced by Maiden bassist and founder-member Steve Harris.

You can read more about the making of the video here.