Bruce Dickinson Tells Noise11 The Mandrake Project is Not A Concept Album - Noise11.com
Bruce Dickinson (PHOTO BY JOHN MCMURTRIE supplied by BMG)

Bruce Dickinson (PHOTO BY JOHN MCMURTRIE supplied by BMG)

Bruce Dickinson Tells Noise11 The Mandrake Project is Not A Concept Album

by Paul Cashmere on January 25, 2024

in News

In an all new interview with Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, Bruce discusses ‘The Mandrake Project’, his first solo album in 19 years and says it is not a concert record.

Watch the Noise11 interview:

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Bruce has premiered the second video from the album and like the first, ‘Afterglow of Ragnarok’, the video in a cinematic epic. “The video for Rain on the Graves is sensational,” Bruce tells Noise11. “Its way better than the first video. Its another story. There is a little bit of thread that goes through the video but its not a concept album that tells a literal story with a narrator.

“Back in 2014 it was going to be that but that all changed seven years down the line. I’d been locked up for three years during Covid and had a bit more perspective on things. I looked at the songs from 2014 and thought it doesn’t need to be a concept album. I’d written a 12 edition comic book series, Watchmen style, not Superhero style. ‘The Mandrake Project’ covers a multitude of sins and I don’t need it to be a concept album. I’ve already got the 12-episode comic book story so leave that bit of it to the comic”.

Check out the video for ‘Rain On The Graves’

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The first song we heard from The Mandrake Project was the ‘in your face’ epic ‘The Afterglow of Ragnarok’. “That’s why I wanted it to be track number one,” Bruce says. “To make people sit up and go “wow, what’s this”. We could have picked ‘Many Doors To Hell’ as the second track, which is pretty conventional, packaged like Scorpions but to me that would give the wrong impression of the record. I wanted people to go “wow, if this track Ragnarok (is first) what’s the rest of it going to sound like?”. And the answer is you have no idea. Ragnarok got peoples attention”.

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