Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson has admitted he doesn’t “really get” Drake after going head-to-head with the rapper in a chart battle earlier this year.

Iron Maiden’s seventeenth album, ‘Senjutsu’, went up against Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ in a chart battle in September, with the metal icons narrowly missing out on getting another UK Number One album.

Despite Maiden leading in the midweeks, ‘Certified Lover Boy’ ended up racked up 46,000 chart sales in the UK, giving him a lead over Maiden by only 1,200 units.

In a new Interview with Yahoo, Dickinson spoke about Drake and said: “I don’t really get what he does.”

“Going head to head with him felt like, ‘No this is real music played by a bunch of old geezers who make no concessions to the times in which we live’,” he added. “People say, ‘You’re dinosaurs.’ And we go, ‘Yeah and there aren’t too many of those left.’ This is who we are, it’s what we do.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Dickinson explained that Iron Maiden fans are like “a table made of plywood”.

“By and large our audience has moved on with us,” he said. “Every year you just add a new layer and the table gets bigger and bigger. We’ve grown organically – not through social media or any of that stuff. We’ve grown by going out and doing it in front of people.”

Despite missing out on the top spot in the UK, ‘Senjutsu’ was Iron Maiden’s highest charting album in America.

The album landed at Number Three in the charts after shifting the equivalent of 64,000 album units. Their previous two albums, ‘The Book of Souls’ and ‘The Final Frontier‘, both peaked at Number Four.

Not everyone is a fan though. In October, parents at a Canadian school launched a petition calling for the removal of its principal, an ardent Iron Maiden fan, who shared two photos on social media.

One saw her posing in-front of an Iron Maiden banner and license plate whilst throwing a ‘horns up’ gesture while the other featured a figure of the band’s mascot, Eddie, sitting alongside a handwritten note saying “Eddie 666” inside a love heart. The “concerned parents” said the post’s affiliation to Iron Maiden demonstrates “satanic imagery”.

However, a week later, the petition was closed after amassing just over 500 signatures and it was confirmed that the teacher in question, Sharon Burns, would be keeping her job.