Singer Tim “Ripper” Owens discussed new KK’s Priest upcoming new album, in a new interview with 80’s Glam Metalcast.
Asked about the new album musical direction, Tim replied:
“I think people got, right out of the gate, with [the recently released first single] ‘Hellfire Thunderbolt’, I think they got a taste of it, what’s kind of in store for you. The album really has a little bit of everything. It’s got the aggression; you hear it with ‘Hellfire’. Even beyond that, with a couple of the tracks, right out of the gate, it has that.
”But it also has the classic metal to it — it has the classic K.K. feel going on with it as well. So it’s got the singalongs, the great live songs, the epic songs — it’s got a little bit of everything. The next one out of the gate, with ‘Sermons Of The Sinner’, it’s a very falsetto-y, high-pitched song — a lot of that stuff going on. And then the rest of the album mixes it up very well.”
Tim also addressed criticism from some fans that “Hellfire Thunderbolt” borrows a little too heavily from Owens‘s and Downing‘s former group.
“It’s funny, ’cause, obviously, people complain about everything, which, I guess, is how the cookie crumbles nowadays. But I think it’s one of the dumbest things that I hear people, who get mad at it, say that, like, ‘Wow, it kind of sounds like Judas…’ Well, K.K. Downing wrote Judas Priest songs since the 1970s, writing JP songs and only JP songs since then, so I think you can maybe also say that it sounds like K.K. Downing, because that’s how he writes.
”And I think it’s a fantastic thing that he didn’t try to go off and invent the wheel again. That’s the sound that K.K. has; he’s written JP songs. And it’s fantastic. It’s got that classic sound. And no need to go away from that.”