Have five minutes and want to make your day significantly more awesome? Then come spend it watching Iron Maiden’s new music video for the song “Stratego,” released by Adult Swim last Wednesday.
Honestly, the work stands for itself, in that it’s kind of incomprehensible but also totally rad:
“For I have not a mortal soul. Death is my future, to be reborn.” That’s awesome, and god only knows what it means, because it’s not a reference to anything. Honestly, it’s almost kind of poignant when you remember the metal band has been playing together since 1975, nearly half a century. Like the band’s zombie mascot Eddie—who’s revealed as the samurai in black at the end of the video, and this entire epic battle of light-vs.-dark has been him playing a match of the Japanese strategy game Shogi—it seems like death can’t ever stop Iron Maiden. Old age clearly hasn’t.
The song is featured on the new album, which is Japanese for “tactics” or “strategy,” a thematically on-brand title given that Stratego is also the name of a very beloved strategy board game. The song was written by Iron Maiden’s longtime songwriter and bassist Steve Harris and guitarist Janick Gers; the band’s frontman, Bruce Dickinson, executive produced the music video which was directed by Swedish artist Gustaf Holtenäs and animated by the London studio Blinkink, which has done other videos for musicians like the Weeknd and Elton John, as well as a segment for Netflix’s sci-fi animation anthology Love Death + Robots. The same team made another video for “The Writing on the Wall,” which is also on Senjutsu:
It’s been a long time since Iron Maiden’s original heydey when it was screaming out hits like 1982's “Hallowed Be Thy Name” and 1984's “Powerslave.” But according to Kerrang, the band is currently battling Drake for the title of the #1 album on the UK music charts. Not bad for a band that’s been around for almost half a century!
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