Maiden Central

The official site has a full press release and track listing for the new Iron Maiden album, ‘Final Frontier’.

Release date has been confirmed as AUGUST 26. The official site is offering the chance to pre-order a HQ MP3 album for around £5, so check that deal out (personally, I prefer getting the real thing, if only for Maiden albums!).

Track listing is as follows:

1. Satellite 15….The Final Frontier     (8:40)
2. El Dorado     (6:49)
3. Mother Of Mercy     (5:20)
4. Coming Home     (5:52)
5. The Alchemist     (4:29)
6. Isle Of Avalon     (9:06)
7. Starblind     (7:48)
8. The Talisman     (9:03)
9. The Man Who Would Be King     (8:28)
10. When The Wild Wind Blows     (10:59)

This, ‘El Dorado’, is the first song released from the upcoming Iron Maiden album, “Final Frontier”. It’s available as a free MP3 download from the official site, but good luck getting it at the moment as naturally there’s quite a demand on the download servers.

From the official site:

Maiden announce show at historic Villa Manin in ITALY for Aug 17 — tickets on sale 9am (GMT) Fri March 19… and Bruce Air is hoping to fly out specially!

Iron Maiden will play an exclusive show in Italy at the Villa Manin nr Udine as part of their Final Frontier World Tour on Aug 17. Bruce is planning a BruceAir* excursion from London’s Gatwick Airport., so keep checking this website for details which will be announced as soon as possible.

…

A special guest will be announced soon. Details for the show are as follows:

IRON MAIDEN The Final Frontier World Tour Tue 17 Aug – Codroipo (Udine) – Villa Manin

Tickets for the exclusive Italian show will go on sale to the public on Friday March 19th at 10:00 a.m. (9am GMT) through Ticketone.com or charge by phone at 892.101 / 892.424 / 892.412

For a return of “Moshing Monday”, here’s Bruce with his solo band (featuring H) in Brazil, with Road To Hell. Oh yeah!

From The Guardian:

Bruce Dickinson’s BBC 6 Music rock show is to be axed and Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie’s Radio 2 show cut to three nights a week in the latest changes to the two stations. Dickinson, the lead singer of Iron Maiden, has presented a rock show on the digital station since it launched in 2002. It is the first 6 Music show to be axed since the BBC announced proposals to close the station at the end of next year.

The video that kicked off the “Modern Era” (read: post-Blaze, and return-to-mass-popularity) of Iron Maiden.

With a title like Final Frontier, it is perhaps inevitable that speculation would begin immediately as to it being Iron Maiden’s final studio album, as hinted by Steve Harris previously. It already has some groups of fans talking about this, what it means for the tour, and also what it means for the band itself.

If it is their last studio release, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Iron Maiden as a touring entity would cease to be; they still draw in a large crowd, and could hypothetically keep touring every other year, doing the best-of shows they’ve been doing on alternate tours recently. However, would this continue to be a challenge for the band, or would they find it mundane?

In my opinion, some members of the band still appreciate the musical challenge of creating new tunes, and the process of actually writing; while some are perhaps happy to simply go through the motions, as they just love being in Iron Maiden and are happy to play, regardless of what they play.

So, it will indeed be very interesting to see what happens in a year’s time when the tour has ended (or close to ending), and whether they will make a formal announcement or not. No doubt, the band will have the question of the future raised numerous times in press interviews leading up the release of Final Frontier.

What do you think?

As the image says, Dream Theater – FUCKING DREAM THEATER!! – will be supporting Maiden on their North American sojourn. Hells yes! Now that is a kick-arse pairing.

The tour hits many of their usual areas, although it will be interesting to see the points plotted out on a map to see how they cover the country.

Iron Maiden Fan Club members, of course, get access to a pre-sale for the tickets – so if you’re not a member, get onto it! As far as I’m aware, online members are able to access the pre-sale, but do check to make sure.

FAN CLUB PRE-SALES – NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

CANADA pre-sale starts Wednesday 10th March

USA pre-sale starts Wednesday 17th March

Iron Maiden are to release their next studio LP, “Final Frontier”, in ‘late summer’ this year (so, expect it to drop around August).

This will be supported by a 22-date North American tour starting in June:

See IronMaiden.com for full details.

Don’t forget to check IronMaiden.com tomorrow, March 4th, at 20.00 GMT for what are sure to be the 2010 dates for Iron Maiden’s North American tour. Here’s hoping it is a full tour, and not a ‘hot spot’ tour as they’ve done previously.

Right now, Maiden’s site is down due to ‘too many connections’, but I have a feeling this is more a CMS issue rather than one of database stability, so I doubt they will have problems handling extra traffic tomorrow.

Interestingly, traffic here at Maiden Central has surged in the days following the announcement of the announcement (erm…), so it looks like 2010 is heating up for the Irons!