According to Billboard, Iron Maiden have achieved their best sales week in the US since Nielsen Music started tracking sales in 1991. The Book of Souls (75,000 units) debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, equalling their highest rank ever, first achieved in 2010 with The Final Frontier’s debut and peak at No. 4.

Billboard adds that The Book Of Souls is the sixth straight Iron Maiden studio album to show debut week sales growth. Their steady climb started with 1998’s Virtual XI (10,000 sales debut, up from the 6,000 of 1995’s X Factor) and then continued on with 2000’s Brave New World (38,000), 2003’s Dance of Death (40,000), 2006’s A Matter of Life and Death (56,000), 2010’s The Final Frontier (63,000) and now its new album.

The Book Of Souls landed straight in at #1 in the UK with combined sales of just over 60,000. The Book Of Souls also topped the UK's Official Vinyl Albums Chart. 

The Book Of Souls was recorded in Paris with their longstanding producer Kevin “Caveman” Shirley in late 2014, with the finishing touches added earlier this year. However, the band decided to delay its release so that vocalist Bruce Dickinson, who was recently given the all-clear from a tumour, would have time to recuperate sufficiently to join in the preparations for the album’s launch.

The stunning cover art was created by Mark Wilkinson who has worked with the band previously, and because this 11 track album has a total running time of 92 minutes, it is Iron Maiden’s first ever double studio album. There’s a broader split on the song-writing compared to previous Maiden records, with bassist and founder member Steve Harris contributing to seven of the tracks; six of them with Maiden’s guitarists and one sole composition. This is also the first time since 1984’s Powerslave that an Iron Maiden studio album also features two tracks written solely by Bruce Dickinson, one of which is the longest song Maiden has ever recorded! And also two Dickinson/Smith collaborations.

Steve comments: “We approached this album in a different way to how we’ve recorded previously. A lot of the songs were actually written while we were there in the studio and we rehearsed and recorded them straight away while they were still fresh, and I think that immediacy really shows in the songs, they have almost a live feel to them I think. I’m very proud of The Book Of Souls, we all are, and we can’t wait for our fans to hear it, and especially to take it out on the road next year!”

Bruce continues: “We’re really excited about The Book Of Souls and had a fantastic time creating it. We started working on the album in late summer 2014 and recorded it at Guillame Tell Studios in Paris, where we’d done the Brave New World album back in 2000 so the studio holds special memories for all of us. We were delighted to discover the same magical vibe is still alive and very much kicking there! So we immediately felt at home and the ideas just started flowing. By the time we’d finished we all agreed that each track was such an integral part of the whole body of work that if it needed to be a double album, then double its going to be!”

Check out the BraveWords review of The Book Of Souls here.