Iron Maiden and Drake are going head-to-head for a UK Number One album this week, as they release highly-anticipated new records.

The metal icons released new album ‘Senjutsu’ on Friday (September 3), the same day that Drake dropped the highly-anticipated ‘Certified Lover Boy’.

According to the Official Charts’ midweek update, Maiden currently lead drake by 8,000 sales, with the metal band leading on physical sales and downloads, while ‘Certified Lover Boy’ has gained significantly more streams.

New NME cover star Little Simz currently sits at Number Three in the midweeks with the five-star ‘Sometimes I Might Be Introvert’, with other new entries in the Top 10 include The Wildhearts at Number Four, while ABBA‘s recent reunion tour and album announcement has their Greatest Hits album ‘Gold’ back in the Top 10 at Number Six as things stand.

NME‘s reviews of Iron Maiden and Drake’s new albums had significantly differing opinions. While calling ‘Senjutsu’ “an imaginative instant classic” in a four-star review, ‘Certified Lover Boy’ was labelled “a boring, bloated disappointment.”

The review of Drake’s new album added: “If Drake feels like the weight of the world is upon him, as he suggests on ‘Champagne Poetry’, ‘Certified Lover Boy’ is not going to go any way towards blasting away that burden. It offers nothing new to the rapper’s canon, merely going through the motions on his old formulas instead.”

Meanwhile, Iron Maiden frontman Bruce Dickinson has opened up on his battle with COVID-19.

The Iron Maiden frontman contracted the coronavirus last month, despite having received both doses of the vaccine. He’d taken a test after feeling “a bit groggy” but believed he would’ve been in “serious trouble” had he not been inoculated.

Dickinson subsequently urged fans to “get vaccinated”, reasoning: “And if you do get sick, you won’t get that sick. It’ll just be like a mild case of the flu.”