Joining host Remy Maxwell today for a special Audacy Check In is Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford, giving us details about the band's upcoming album, Invincible Shield, set for release on March 8, as well as what to expect on their upcoming tour, and more.
LISTEN NOW: Audacy Check In with Rob Halford of Judas Priest
We're just weeks away from the release of Metal masters Judas Priest's 19th studio album, Invincible Shield, which was announced on-stage at the 2023 Power Trip festival and is set to drop on March 8. Invincible Shield marks the band’s first release in six years, after recently celebrating 50 years in music and 50 million records sold. As a bonus, the band will also be hitting the road on their upcoming Live Nation-produced Invincible Shield Tour, which is kicking off in the U.S. on April 18.
Joining us from his kitchen in the West Midlands; “In the black country, the home of Heavy Metal,” as he calls it, frontman Rob Halford and the rest of the band are currently gearing up for rehearsals for their Invincible Shield World Tour, kicking off in the U.K. this March “for the first time in forever,” Rob admits. “We're starting in the U.K. Glasgow, Bonnie Scotland, you're getting us first.”
When the band makes their way to the U.S. in April and May with special guests Sabaton, Rob says “That's gonna be kind of an opportunity to complete what we originally set out to do,” of course referencing guitarist Richie Faulkner being rushed to the hospital with major heart issues in 2021. “I'm so grateful to the Sabaton guys to reconnect with us so we can kind of finish what we started, if that's the right thing to say. We love that band, and I think that a lot of the fans were eager to see this happen again and make the whole thing go full circle.”
Diving straight into the first three singles already released from Invincible Shield -- "Crown Of Horns," "Panic Attack," and "Trial By Fire" -- Halford says, “Your first three tracks of your new album are so important because they have to send the right messages out in terms of connectivity and ‘what are they doing now? What is it gonna sound like?’ You know, there's then the excitement and the anticipation of your new music, your fans around the world are just like, ‘What are they doing? Give me some, I want to check it out.’”
“There's that great intro to ‘Panic Attack,’" Halford explains, “which starts with the almost turbo sounding guitars and then the drums, and then the syndrums -- and I thought, ‘I just know our fans are gonna be listening [saying], ‘What the hell is this s***? What are they doing now?’ Which is exactly what we wanted to do in terms of getting your attention, getting you focused and ready. Because when that song opens up when those first rhythm riffs start blasting through... and then the band is just taking off. We leave the launch pad immediately.”
“There are structures, the arrangements, the DNA of that song is full of lots of beautiful metal trails that take this band all the way back to [1976’s] ‘Sad Wings of Destiny’ and beyond. That's important, that this music on ‘Invincible Shield’ is obviously the reference to Priest in 2024. It's built-in... instinctively. You know what you gotta do, but you've got to work really hard to come up with the goods that are carrying their own, so to speak. Every track, every track, we're still delivering the goods.”
“I'm really pleased with the way that we've unleashed these first three tracks,” Halford admits, “because again, it just shows you the breadth of the ability of this band to take you to all these different places. Those three songs are nothing like each other... but when they're connected to the rest of the material you're getting, again, this beautiful album definition of what Priest is doing in representing itself in 2024. Wait ‘til you hear ‘The Serpent and the King,’ that's gonna rip your head off.”
Judas Priest stepped in for the ailing Ozzy Osbourne this past October at Power Trip in the California desert, performing alongside Iron Maiden, Guns N' Roses, AC/DC, Tool, and Metallica. It was “a remarkable event,” Halford says. “We were obviously grateful to have the opportunity to be there, but when I step back now and I look at the moment, and the bands that took part in that 'Power Trip,' wow, it was extraordinary. One of the most powerful things for me is the fact that these bands collectively cover like hundreds of years of music if you put us all together in a timeline of how long we've been around and what we've done.”
“For those fans,” Rob continues, “my nephew Alex, Ian Hill's son, he was there for three days and he came to have fish and chips with me the other day and he's still buzzing... He's still in Palm Springs in October of last year because it carried so much weight.
“We're all fans of each other. It's the purity, it's the absolute simple purity and love and respect that we have for each other in these bands, and Metallica will be the first to say how much they love Priest and how much we've been in each other's world in that respect,” Halford continues, remembering how he learned after their set that the Metallica members had been up front singing and wailing along. “You know, probably the biggest band in the world in Rock and Roll, and for them to do that was just an absolute display of the realness of it all, the absolute realness of it all,” he says. “To be out there at the front, I didn't even know they were there until afterwards. My phone started pinging and I'm going, ‘What's going on? I'm looking at the phone and then I see clips of, you know, Kirk [Hammett] doing it... That's who they are. They're beautiful guys.”
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Looking ahead to their upcoming tour dates, Halford wants fans to know that “When you see Priest, now more than ever it's an event because you're seeing a band, the core of the band has its roots in the very beginning of Heavy Metal. Two bands that define the beginnings of heavy metal, Judas Priest and Black Sabbath... Sabbath have done their duty and now they're in a different place. So, Priest is it if you wanna see where it all started. If you wanna hear music when we fire up ‘Victim of Changes’ again in 2024 that was written in 1972, 73 and you see the reaction that's making still. The roots of that song comes from 1970; look what it's doing now in 2024. There's very few bands that can carry the weight of that and still be standing with the horns up with their beautiful fans and going, ‘look at us, we're still here and we're still making metal.’”
“Check out the ‘Invincible Shield,’” Rob implores, “and come and bang your heads with us when we get into town.”
Take a look at the full list of Judas Priest's Invincible Shield Tour dates. Tickets are available now.
Don't miss Remy Maxwell's full Audacy Check In with Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford above -- and stay tuned for more conversations with your favorite artists on Audacy.com/live.
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