In a recent interview with SiriusXM’s Ozzy’s Boneyard host Mark Strigl, Rob Halford talked about Judas Priest’s new album progress.
Asked by Strigl what fans can expect from the new album, Halford replied:
“That’s what we love about Priest, isn’t it? I’ve always said we’re the band that can kind of rip the skin off your face with ‘Painkiller’, and then the next second we can be your ‘turbo lover’, or we can go and ‘break the law’ or we can become ‘the sentinel’.
“We’ve always had so much fun and adventure with not only the albums but the songs within the albums. It’s part of who we are. And making these little microcosms of our personalities within the songs especially, all those names that I’ve referenced just, they’ve each got like a little mini-movie going on in your head when you think of the lyrics and the message, and then it’s all supported by incredible music working together.
“That ‘Firepower’ record was a real pure effort on our part to do a little bit of reflection and reinforce a lot of the things that we’ve loved about Priest from day one. That’s not to say we went, ‘Okay, let’s get a bit of a vibe from ‘Rocka Rolla’ here.’ And then, ‘How about some ‘Sad Wings Of Destiny’?’ And ‘Don’t forget ‘Point Of Entry’.’ It was none of that. It was just really this overall umbrella of things that we’ve achieved in metal, and just using that in the back of our minds as we went through from song to song to song. And I wanna say it made it a little bit easier.
”And what I mean by that is when you have a focus and a direction and a template on which to work from, then you can keep going back to that and going, ‘Okay, this is where we’re focusing the ideas and the creativity,’ and so on and so forth. So that’s how ‘Firepower’ came together like it did. That album, to me, as a Priest fan, is as important as, say, ‘Painkiller’ was in reaffirming this band, and also what ‘British Steel’ was in reaffirming this band.
”And what I mean by reaffirmation is that it’s like a football team or a basketball team. That team has been there forever, but you’re bringing these ideas, you’re bringing these moves, and then you go, ‘Yeah, these are the things that make that band great.’ ‘These are the things that make this team great.’ And because I overthink everything, that was my thought philosophy behind’Firepower’. So you’ve got that in the back of your mind when you’re trying to write this current album. And it can be a mind game.”