And that would fall into the "I would have to kill you" category to find out song titles?

"Oh yes, definitely!"

And no album title?

"No way Jose!"

Is there an album title?

"Yeah, we do have an album title."

It's going to take a long night in a pub in downtown Toronto...

"Oh boy, not even! I'm normally much more careless than this, but not today."

Iron Maiden has been mentioned as taking over the European Festival circuit next spring/summer.

"Possibly," he laughs. "Effectively, what's happening next year is we're going to come out in early summer and we'll be doing all the European Festivals, so you can pretty much guess which festivals we will be doing. We'll not be doing all of them, but a majority of them. And we'll be headlining. The plot is to do South America enroute to North America."

With 2000 being billed as the year of the Maiden, Bruce isn't losing sleep with all this armageddon chatter.

"Oh no, I don't give a shit, nothing's going to happen. I've got the inside track. We had a great meeting and we're getting along f**king amazing. The only barrier between me and the rest of the guys is I get to rollerblade during rehearsals, cuz I've got the radio mike. When we're rehearsing all these songs, we have this huge rehearsal studio. It's like a sound stage and it's got this big flat floor and the band is right at the other end. So I have my rollerblades strapped on and throughout the whole rehearsal I can sing and rollerblade at the same time. I have this slalom course set up and I've got Maiden playing in the background. I'm rollerblading to Iron Maiden and singing at the same time. It's f**king cool. And Janick and Steve are absolutely busting a gut to get on skates, but they're like 'f**king hell, we'd get so much shit if we got on skates and broke our wrists or something and f**ked ourselves up for the album.' If I break my f**king leg it doesn't matter, I can still sing."

Has any one bandmate surprised you with their presence or performance?

"Everybody is kind of like I expected them to be, just pretty full on. I never expected anything less than absolutely one hundred percent full on. It's always been a source of amusement for all of us that suddenly we've been re-invented, like 'Maiden are back.' You see, I didn't see them with Blaze, but I could never imagine Maiden as not being Maiden. In fact, a couple of people who I really respect and I said, 'what were they like?' and they said, 'the band were f**king outrageous, so fierce.' So I was like, 'cool, good, excellent.' And now we're back together; I think it's just a question of perception. I think people believe what they want to believe. Now they believe that Maiden are back - well Maiden are back. I don't think that the band itself has undergone a head transplant or something. Expect a really cool surprising record. Everybody will be pleasantly surprised. That's what I'm betting anyways."

And what about dear ol' Eddie?

"Eddie, Eddie, let me see if I can remember who Eddie is. It wouldn't surprise me if Eddie featured pretty prominently. You'll just have to wait and see."

Bastards!