In an interview with Qobuz, Bruce Dickinson hinted at the possibility of a new studio album following the conclusion of his three-year, 12-episode comic book series accompanying his recent studio album, The Mandrake Project.
When questioned about the prospect of releasing another album at the trilogy's culmination, Dickinson said: "Oh, you know what? That is something I don't know. Obviously, it's a possibility, but I'm not going to force myself to go, 'Oh, I have to do this because it's at the end of three years.'"
"If something happens naturally, then great. I'm not gonna sit on my butt and do nothing. But what I've learned from this process is when you do stuff, just do stuff that is really great quality. Rather than do ten things that are all average, do one thing, which is really good," he added.
In a recent interview with Loudwire Nights, just before the album's release, Dickinson confirmed plans for a new album with his longtime collaborator Roy Z. So it seems like Dickinson is pretty much hellbent on staying busy and continuing his resurrected solo career.
"The comic's gonna go on for three years, just under. And in terms of music, obviously The Mandrake Project, the album is done, and then we'll see how people take to it. But I'm going to be writing music in two or three weeks, I hope, with Roy again, because we've got more stuff we wanna do. So, yeah, there'll be another album, because we already have 10 or 12 different ideas for it."
For the last decade, Dickinson has been developing the story of The Mandrake Project, his saga about the century-long battle for the human control of immortality. The Mandrake Project was also Dickinson's first new solo album in 19 years, so it's pretty cool see that the record isn't just a one-off return to his own music. Or at least that seems to be the plan, anyway.