Songfacts®:

• Bruce Dickinson, best known as lead singer of Iron Maiden, often draws on literature for his lyrics. "Shadow Of The Gods," from his solo album The Mandrake Project, looks to Shakespeare.
  
  He described it in a Songfacts track by track as "a cosmic Romeo and Juliet story - two star-crossed lovers who cross paths in eternity, and maybe they'll meet up somewhere else in the future."
• Leave it to Dickinson to get the word "necromancer" into a lyric:
  
  I need a necromancer
  That science has no use
  
  A necromancer is one who can communicate with the dead; he needs one to contact his beloved. If that term sounds familiar, you might be a Rush fan - they released a song in 1976 called "The Necromancer."
• "Shadow Of The Gods" was written for a collaboration Bruce Dickinson had in the works back in 2005 with Ronnie James Dio and Rob Halford. They had an album planned that would have brought together three of the most distinctive voices in rock but Dio got sick and couldn't do it (he died in 2010). Dickinson wrote the song with his producer, Roy Z, expecting it to have the three voices. It took a while, but he finally recorded it for his 2024 solo album The Mandrake Project, where it takes up 7 minutes.