Before Korn, before Metallica, before any of today's hard rock elite were piecing together riffs in their garages, Iron Maiden was bolstering the British metal prototype and road-testing it around the world. Maiden's early '80s output on albums such as "Killers," "The Number Of The Beast," and "Powerslave" brought together fantasy imagery, musicianship, and sheer volume in a combination that would come to mean "metal" to legions of fans.

But there was a time when it looked as though the band's legacy would die in the '90s. Following the 1993 departure of frontman Bruce Dickinson, dark days followed and Maiden limped along, seemingly bound for the metal scrap heap. However, instead of fading into obscurity, Maiden regrouped, refocused, and came up with what could be the biggest hit of its 24-year career. So far, "Brave New World" brought Maiden a top 40 debut and its biggest radio hit in the form of "The Wicker Man."

Recently, Dickinson sat down with MTV News' Robert Mancini to talk about recording with his mates for the first time in seven years. He also dished on capturing the "classic" Maiden sound, the group's plans for Eddie, and why "no other band on Earth can touch us."

MTV News: I have to say that the new album sounds classic without feeling dated.

Dickinson: Yeah, it's the classic sound. If it was the Rolling Stones, you'd say it was a great Rolling Stones record, and nobody would be disappointed that it doesn't sound like Nine Inch Nails. It's like, "Duh." It's a great sound, and there's nothing wrong with it.

MTV: There must be a struggle that a musician has after you've established yourself and you've created a signature sound. There's got to be something inside of you that makes you think "Maybe I want to do something a little bit different. Maybe I want to go the David Bowie route and change it up every time, or maybe I would rather go the AC/DC route and find one thing and be really good at it for an entire career."

Dickinson: Well, it doesn't suit everybody all the time. Obviously I went off and did my solo thing, and in a sense, that's in many ways what made it possible for me to come back to Maiden.... I saw going back to Maiden as being almost like a new frontier. [I said] "Wow, here's a chance to make this thing huge again," because it's truly a great sound. I mean, when the band is on and we're doing it live, there's no other band on Earth can touch us. I really, really believe that.

It's kind of a cool challenge as well, 'cause so many people have written the band off. A lot of people who've written the band off were not very experienced Maiden watchers or Maiden fans. They didn't really know how good the band was deep down, so it's very easy for them to be dedicated followers of fashion and write off everything that's metal every five minutes. So coming back to the band and making the record, most importantly, was a good way of achieving the end result. [RealVideo]

We've done it collectively as well. It's not like I have anything more to do with this record than anybody else on it. On the songwriting credits, I'm [only] involved in four songs out of the ten songs on the record. There are five writers in the band, so if the record sounds uniformly strong, it's uniformly strong because of the uniform strength within the band.

The new LP's "twist in the tail," and Maiden goes... electronic? NEXT!