RadioactiveMike Z, host of the 96.7 KCAL-FM radio program “Wired In The Empire”, had a conversation with Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, talking about the possibility of the band to make a ”sequel” of JP classic album ”Painkiller”.
The singer said:
“The joy of Priest is that, by definition, I think every record that we’ve made is what we call, it’s got its own legs to stand on. So, from ‘Rocka Rolla’ all the through to ‘Firepower’, I think there’s a defining separation of where the band is in that moment in time. And we’ve always been very strong on avoiding replication.
”That’s not to say that you can’t have intense, fast metal songs that have a similar flavor, but they have very strong individual identities. And I think it’s a case of ‘let sleeping metal gods lie,’ in that respect, to reference to ‘Painkiller‘. Because I think if you try to emulate the real soul and spirit of ‘Painkiller’ — I’m sure we’d have a really good go at it, but it wouldn’t capture it; it wouldn’t come close.
”It’s just such a unique record in so many ways — the songs, the engineering, the sound of the hi-hat, the mic I used — all these vitally important nuances that go into making a record, you can’t really truly replicate them and capture the essence again. So I think it’s best to leave it as it is.
“Of course, the beautiful thing is that the ‘Firepower’ record, the last Priest record, the last studio album, that got a tremendous amounts of focus and traction to what it did compared to the records previous to that one.
“Any band will tell you, you never really know what the outcome is gonna be, and when we got in the studio to make ‘Firepower’ happen after we’d written the songs, we’d brought in this incredible production team that made amazing things happen, [and] we had another really special moment in this band’s history,”