Iron Maiden have released a new video in which singer Bruce Dickinson, wearing a shirt for “Belshazzar’s Feast,” invites fans to that very event:
“July the fifteenth. Rain or shine, heaven or hell, man or beast, you’re invited to Belshazzar’s Feast. But your mum can’t come!”
The video all but confirms rumors that the legendary NWOBHM band are getting ready to release new music.
Those rumors began earlier this month, after the band released various clues online and IRL. These included:
- Flyers for “Belshezzar’s Feast” were spotted on the grounds of Download Pilot, the 10,000-person mini version of the annual U.K. festival that took place earlier in June as part of a COVID-19 government study. “Live forever,” “man or beast” and “heaven or hell” were printed on the flyers, along with two sets of numbers: “15/07” and the Roman numerals “IMXVII.”
Fans speculated — correctly, as we now know — that the first number is a reference to the fifteenth of July. Those same theorists posited that the second stands for Iron Maiden 17. Iron Maiden’s next album will be their seventeenth.
2. Fans who emailed an address on the flyer got responses with lyric-like lines that work in the acronym “WOTW” with the first letter of each sentence, such as in the second paragraph here:
“Belshazzar’s Feast” is a story from the Book of Daniel in the Bible commonly known as the story of the writing on the wall.
The phrase “WOTW” appeared on a recent Maiden tour flyer:
3. English singer-songwriter Frank Turner wore the same “Belshazzar’s Feast” t-shirt Dickinson wears in the new vide during an interview at Download Pilot, slyly unzipping his hoodie to reveal it when the interviewer asked if Turner had heard anything about a new Maiden album:
4. Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson has been spotted in the short before as well: he wore it during a Sky News interview. The shirt was overshadowed by Dickinson’s comments about how Brexit has made the touring situation throughout Europe more difficult for his band (Dickinson expressed his support for Brexit previously), but you can plainly see it here:
5. A newly created Twitter account, @bels_feast (displaying the name ‘Daniel’), has been circulating similar images. Some Reddit users (who else?) noticed that the account only follows sixteen other pages, each of which corresponds to one of Iron Maiden’s sixteen albums:
6. Iron Maiden’s official Twitter account made a sly “WOTW” reference, this time as “Walker on the wing:”
7. A video of what purports to be a new Iron Maiden song called “Writing on the Wall (Belshazzar’s Feast)” appeared on YouTube via an account titled Daniel Belshazzar. The music certainly sounds like Maiden — whether it is or it’s just some clever imposters is anyone’s guest — but the quality is more like a demo or pre-pro track than a finalized song. Have a listen:
You can watch the new video with Dickinson below.
Iron Maiden’s most recent album, The Book of Souls, was released on September 4, 2015. It sold 75,000+ units in its first week of release, debuting in the #2 spot on Billboard 200 chart and marking the group’s biggest sales week since Nielsen Music began tracking sales in 1991.
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