Speaking with Metal Hammer, Herman Li (DragonForce) Oskar Dronjak (HammerFall), Erlend Hjelvik (Hjelvik, ex-Kvelertak), Roel van Helden (Powerwolf) and Metal Blade CEO Brian Slagel weighed in on Iron Maiden's new album, Senjutsu. Following is an excerpt from the rundown.

Herman Li: "For a longtime fan like myself, Senjutsu is exactly what I’m looking for. This is a real heavy metal album. That means it has long, epic songs, loads of melodies, great singing and awesome guitar solos. If you don’t like those things, you probably don’t really like heavy metal."

Oscar Dronjak: "Full disclosure: there is a lot to like about this album if you’re an Iron Maiden fan, especially if you think they still are as great as they ever were in the studio. In many ways, Senjutsu is a continuation of their previous record, The Book Of Souls, and that is a good thing. For me, the singles – especially 'Stratego' – stood out immediately, but my guess is this is an album that will divulge a lot of wonderful musical secrets the deeper you get into it. And I, for one, can’t wait to find out!"

Brian Slagel: "My favourite band of all time is Iron Maiden. I was a big fan of The Book Of Souls, and 'The Red And The Black' is in my all-time Top 10 list of Maiden songs. So this album had a lot to live up to! Senjutsu lives up to it and it gets better with every listen. My first listen I liked it, but was not sure how much I liked it. Now after my fifth listen, I am really getting into it. I love all the songs, with 'Stratego', 'The Parchment' and 'Hell On Earth' being my top three so far. It makes me so happy as a fan that these guys are still creating music at such a high level."

Read the complete rundown here.

Iron Maiden earns its highest charting album ever on the Billboard 200 chart (dated September 18), as its latest studio effort Senjutsu debuts at #3. The veteran band previously peaked at #4 with its last two studio releases: The Book Of Souls (in 2015) and The Final Frontier (2010). In total, Senjutsu is Iron Maiden’s 15th top 40-charting album (dating to its first, The Number Of The Beast, in 1982), of which four have hit the top 10.

Of Senjutsu’s 64,000 equivalent album units earned, album sales comprise 61,000 (making it the top-selling album of the week), SEA units comprise 3,000 (equaling 3.57 million on-demand streams of the set’s 10 tracks) and TEA units comprise a negligible sum.

Senjutsu logs the second-largest week of 2021 for a hard rock album in both equivalent album units earned and in traditional album sales. It trails only Foo Fighters’ Medicine At Midnight, which debuted on the February 20 chart with 70,000 units (of which 64,000 were in album sales). (Hard rock albums are defined as those that have charted on Billboard’s Hard Rock Albums chart.)

Read more at Billboard.com.

As reported last week, Senjutsu landed at #2 on the UK's Official Albums Chart Top 100, kept from the top spot by Canadian rapper Drake. On Ireland's Official Irish Albums Chart Top 50, Senjutsu takes the #3 spot, again trumped by Drake (#1) and last week's #1, Kanye West's Donda.

Senjutsu was released on September 3 via BMG, and is available to order/save at IronMaiden.com

For Senjutsu - loosely translated as ‘tactics & strategy,’ the band once again enlisted the services of Mark Wilkinson to create the spectacular Samurai themed cover artwork, based on an idea by 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.

Steve says: “We chose to record at Guillaume Tell Studio in France again as the place has such a relaxed vibe. The setup there is perfect for our needs; the building used to be a cinema and has a really high ceiling so there’s a great acoustic sound. We recorded this album in the same way we did The Book Of Souls in that we’d write a song, rehearse it and then put it down together straight away while it was all fresh in our minds. There’s some very complex songs on this album which took a lot of hard work to get them exactly as we wanted them to sound, so the process was at times very challenging, but Kevin is great at capturing the essence of the band and I think it was worth the effort!  I’m very proud of the result and can’t wait for fans to hear it.”

Bruce continues: “We’re all really excited about this album. We recorded it back in early 2019 during a break in the Legacy tour so we could maximize our touring yet still have a long set up period before release to prepare great album art and something special as a video. Of course the pandemic delayed things more - so much for the best laid plans – or should that be ‘strategies’!?  The songs are very varied, and some of them are quite long. There’s also one or two songs which sound pretty different to our usual style, and I think Maiden fans will be surprised -  in a good way, I hope!"

Senjutsu is available in the following formats:

- Standard 2CD Digipak
- Deluxe 2CD Book Format
- Deluxe heavyweight 180G Triple Black Vinyl
- Special Edition Triple Silver And Black Marble Vinyl
- Special Edition Triple Red and Black Marble Vinyl
- Super Deluxe Boxset featuring CD, Blu Ray and Exclusive Memorabilia
- Digital album [streaming and download]

Tracklisting:

"Senjutsu" (8:20) - Smith/Harris
"Stratego" (4:59) - Gers/Harris
"The Writing On The Wall" (6:13) - Smith/Dickinson
"Lost In A Lost World" (9:31) - Harris
"Days Of Future Past" (4:03) - Smith/Dickinson
"The Time Machine" (7:09) - Gers/Harris
"Darkest Hour" (7:20) - Smith/Dickinson
"Death Of The Celts" (10:20) - Harris
"The Parchment" (12:39) - Harris
"Hell On Earth" (11:19) - Harris

"Stratego" video:

"Senjutsu" visualizer:

"The Writing On The Wall" video: