Bruce Dickinson reveals why Iron Maiden works with producer Kevin Shirley: “Nobody works like we do. We are definitely a one-off”

English heavy metal legends Iron Maiden released their new album “Senjutsu” this week’s friday via Sony BMG. The group’s first LP in six years was recorded in Paris with longstanding producer Kevin Shirley and co-produced by Harris. It was preceded by a highly acclaimed animated video for the first single “The Writing On The Wall” made by BlinkInk based on a concept by singer Bruce Dickinson with two former Pixar executives. It followed a month-long teaser campaign and global “treasure hunt” for clues about the track title and concept.

For “Senjutsu” — loosely translated as “tactics and strategy” — the band once again enlisted the services of Mark Wilkinson to create the spectacular Samurai themed cover artwork, based on an idea by bassist Steve Harris. With a running time of a little under 82 minutes, “Senjutsu”, like their previous record “The Book Of Souls”, will be a double CD/Triple vinyl album.

You can listen to the album in full below:

During an appearance on SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation Virtual Invasion, The band’s iconic singer Bruce Dickinson was asked during a recent interview done by SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation Virtual Invasion why he and his bandmates keep going back to producer Kevin Shirley album after album. Dickinson said the following about working with Kevin Shirley once again with “Senjutsu” album (as transcribed by Blabbermouth.net):

“Kevin’s a very good producer; he’s a very good, knowledgeable, technical producer. But we are difficult to work with. I haven’t worked with that many bands, but I’ve worked with a fair number of musicians, and I know in general how people tend to work. Nobody works like we do. We are definitely a one-off. The way things get put together, all the funny little protocols, the little politics within the band. Not in a bad way — this is just the way it works. I imagine it’s kind of the same in The Rolling Stones. I imagine The Rolling Stones, it’s not like working with anybody else. It’s, like, ‘What are they doing now?’ They always do that on Thursday. And they’ve done it for 45 years; that’s what they do on a Thursday, and nobody interferes with that. And it’s the same with us; we have all these little eccentricities. I don’t think we could work any other way.

I do albums — obviously, I’ve done solo albums and things, working with [producer/guitarist] Roy [Z] and some great musicians, and you work in a more kind of traditional way. And Adrian’s [Smith, MAIDEN guitarist] done records and worked in a more traditional way. But we, as a band, need to get together and play in a big room and actually make a lot of noise and do… I mean, it’s old-school stuff. And when people say, ‘You’re kind of like dinosaur rock,’ I’m, like, ‘Yeah. Yeah. It’s good.’ And that’s not a bad thing. How many dinosaurs are there left in the world? If you’re gonna be a dinosaur, you wanna be a [Tyrannosaurus] rex. What do you feed a T. rex? Anything it wants. And it’s kind of like that with being a producer of IRON MAIDEN — you’re part of the team but you’ve gotta play by our rules. And there’s a lot of producers that couldn’t cope. Not that they’re incapable of doing stuff, but they would rapidly come up against a brick wall with some of our opinions and practices in the studio.”

-Bruce Dickinson