HE has one of the most powerful voices in heavy metal and fronts an iconic British band.
Now Bruce Dickinson, 65, is taking the downtime before Iron Maiden’s next tour to put out his first solo album in 18 years.
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The singer’s seventh studio LP – The Mandrake Project – will be released on March 1 and followed by a full blown tour.
Second single from the album, Rain On The Graves, is out this week and sees Bruce on theatrical top form.
Inspired by a rainy visit to poet William Wordsworth’s grave in the Lake District, the heavy riffing song reflects on mortality.
And there’s a hefty a nod to the alleged deal blues musician Robert Johnson is said to have made with the devil in the 1930s.
Legend has it the aspiring musician swapped his soul for guitar mastery at a crossroads in rural Mississippi.
From that moment forth he found himself blessed (or cursed) with mesmerising ability.
Bruce said of the song: “I had the chorus lyric since I visited Grasmere for a wedding back in 2012 and it wasn’t difficult years later to create the rest of the song with so much rich imagery in my head!”
The Mandrake Project is bigger than an album. There’s also an accompanying sci-fi comic book series, created by Dickinson and illustrated by Staz Johnson, telling a tale of “power, abuse and a struggle for identity.”
If all of this isn’t enough, Dickinson will reconvene with Maiden in the autumn for the next leg of the band’s The Future Past world tour.
The band, whose famous mascot is a towering monster called Eddie, are best known for metal anthems such as Number of The Beast, Two Minutes To Midnight and Run For The Hills.
Founded in 1975 by East End bassist Steve Harris, the band have released 17 studio albums and sold more than 130 million records worldwide.
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