The recent issue of the German magazine BLAST features an article about A Matter Of Life And Death. The Mods/Admins are currently discussing about how to deal with foreign-language articles, so we will not yet post a scan or full translation of the article yet, however, we will give some information on the most interesting parts here.
Prominently featured are Adrian Smith, Dave Murray and Bruce Dickinson who reveal a bit about the writing and recording process of the album. Basically, Bruce says that the whole album was done quite spontaneously, but they also had to fight with a couple of problems. Read on for a selection of quotes.
Many thanks to Perun for the translation
[Dave] "The piece 'Out Of The Shadows' wouldn't work at all in the rehearsal room. Bruce got quite frustrated by that. But in the studio, we could rearrange the song as a band so that it could still go on the album."
The band continue talking about the individual songwriters and how big Adrian's influence was. Finally, Bruce talks about the forthcoming tour.
[Bruce] "All those who have heard the material are completely excited. That's why we plan to bring the complete new album onstage, from the first to the last song. Then we'll play a couple of classics and good night."
Finally, Bruce also talks a bit about the band's future.
"We'll begin rehearsals in September, then the tour begins. At the moment, Japan will be the start, but maybe we'll do a couple of gigs in the USA before that. Europe will follow in November, and nothing will happen in 2007. There is supposed to be a big festival tour in 2008. That could already be our final farewell."
This does not come as a complete surprise, Bruce has, after all, talked about the band's end several times. It is, however, a bit shocking that the planning seems to be so exact, and Bruce notices that. "We want to stop as a band that the fans keep in good memory. Apart from that, the members won't just disappear. For my part, I still have a lot of power" (...)
Note from the Maidenfans team: Before you start raving about this paragraph, let us point out a couple of things. First of all, the world does not end if Maiden split. Second, Bruce has been known to say a couple of things about the band that turned out to be wrong: He announced a tour in Summer 2006, for example. Third: Take it easy and let things come their way; you won't be able to change things anyway. Fourth: This is not necessarily a leading magazine (it is actually the magazine of a label that does not distribute Maiden), and it's wise to mistrust information from this type of publication. At least until it is confirmed by a more serious magazine or another band member.
