British heavy metal legends IRON MAIDEN have set "The Final Frontier" as the title of their new studio album, due late summer of this year.

The announcement comes with news of a North American tour with very special guests DREAM THEATER to open in Dallas, Texas, on June 9 and finish in Washington D.C. on July 20, making it MAIDEN's most extensive North American tour in many years.

Following these shows in USA and Canada, "The Final Frontier World Tour" will travel back to Europe for a few selected major festival and stadium shows with the band planning to continue to many other countries in 2011.

An exclusive pre-sale allowing members of the IRON MAIDEN fan club first access to tickets to the North American MAIDEN shows will be made available two days prior to them being available to the public.

Tickets for the Canadian shows will go on sale to the public on Saturday, March 13 at 10 a.m. PST (10 a.m. EST for Toronto and 12 noon EST Montreal). Exclusive first access to the tickets will be available to IRON MAIDEN fan club members on Wednesday, March 10 at 10 a.m. PST through to Thursday, March 11 at 6 p.m. PST (EST for Toronto). Regretfully due to technical reasons an exclusive pre-sale in Montreal is not possible.

Tickets for the U.S. shows will go on sale to the public on Saturday, March 20 at 10 a.m. EST. Exclusive first access to the tickets will be available to IRON MAIDEN fan club members on Wednesday, March 17 at 10 a.m. EST through to Thursday, March 18 at 6 p.m. EST

As IRON MAIDEN are actively dedicated to ensuring their fans always have access to the best possible tickets at the fairest possible price, without being subject to scalping for good seats, so many North American shows will operate, at least in part, a paperless ticket policy.

To give IRON MAIDEN fan club members a privileged insight to their touring world, IMTV will return to www.ironmaiden.com to cover "The Final Frontier World Tour". This exclusive footage includes regular video from the live shows, touring, band interviews, insights into our crew and what they do and much much more. The website will also feature exclusive tour diaries, exclusive photographs and anything else that helps the fans get a real insight into the dynamics of a big tour.

"The Final Frontier 2010 North American Tour" dates:

Jun. 09 - Dallas, TX - Superpages.com Center
Jun. 11 - Houston, TX - Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion
Jun. 12 - San Antonio, TX - AT&T Center
Jun. 14 - Denver, CO - Comfort Dental Amphitheatre
Jun. 16 - Albuquerque, NM - The Pavilion
Jun. 17 - Phoenix, AZ - Cricket Wireless Pavilion
Jun. 19 - San Bernardino, CA - San Manuel Amphitheatre
Jun. 20 - Concord, CA - Sleep Train Pavilion
Jun. 22 - Auburn, WA - White River Amphitheatre
Jun. 24 - Vancouver, BC - GM Place
Jun. 26 - Edmonton, AB - Rexall Place
Jun. 29 - Saskatoon, SK - Credit Union Center
Jun. 30 - Winnipeg, MB - MTS Center +
Jul. 03 - Toronto, ON - Molson Amphitheatre
Jul. 07 - Montreal, QC - Bell Centre
Jul. 11 - Holmdel, NJ - PNC
Jul. 12 - New York, NY - Madison Square Garden
Jul. 14 - Pittsburgh, PA - First Niagra Pavilion
Jul. 15 - Cleveland, OH - Blossom Music Center
Jul. 17 - Detroit, MI - DTE Energy Music Theatre
Jul. 18 - Chicago, IL - First Midwest Bank Amphitheatre
Jul. 20 - Washington D.C. - Jiffy Lube Live

+ DREAM THEATER will not perform in Winnipeg

IRON MAIDEN recorded "The Final Frontier" at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas with producer Kevin Shirley. According to a posting on Kevin's official web site, "There's still work to do, but the band portion is complete and in the can, so to speak."

Shirley previously worked on the last three MAIDEN albums — 2000's "Brave New World", 2003's "Dance of Death" and 2006's "A Matter of Life and Death".

The next IRON MAIDEN album will be the band's fifteenth studio record, and they face a challenge to follow up "A Matter of Life and Death", which was received well critically and saw the group play the whole album on tour.

Speaking at last year's premiere of the band's documentary film "Iron Maiden: Flight 666", guitarist Adrian Smith stated, "There's always a bit of pressure to follow up the last album. In a way, it's good, because it motivates you.

"We never get complacent; we always try our best for our own sake as much as anything else. As far as pressure for another album, we just do what we do — we've been doing it long enough now; we know what we're doing. [laughs]"

IRON MAIDEN guitarist Janick Gers revealed to BBC News in November that the band was on its way "to Paris for three weeks to work on some new stuff." He added, "The most important thing for a band is to create new music, otherwise you're not valid — you become a parody."

IRON MAIDEN will headline this year's edition of the U.K.'s Sonisphere festival, which will be held Saturday, July 31, 2010 and Sunday, August 1, 2010 at Knebworth.

MAIDEN became the first outfit in history to travel round the world in a customized jet during their "Somewhere Back in Time" tour, as detailed in award-winning movie "Flight 666".

The Boeing 757 carried musicians, crew, gear and guests with singer Bruce Dickinson, a qualified airline pilot, at the controls.