Judas Priest originally announced their farewell tour named the Epitaph World Tour for 2011 and 2012. Then everything changed when Judas Priest guitarist K. K. Downing left the band in April 2011 and was replaced by guitarist Richie Faulkner. Judas Priest would go on to release (so far) three more records – Redeemer of Souls in 2014, Firepower in 2018, and Invincible Shield in 2024 – and has played plenty more tours. So what changed? In an interview with The Pick, Judas Priest bassist Ian Hill had two words – Richie Faulkner.
"Richie Faulkner. Yeah, he came, he replaced Ken [K.K. Downing], who went off to do his own thing .Of course, the whole idea was to slow down a little bit and to take the workload down a notch. But Richie came along with boundless enthusiasm and all this energy, and he just sort of rubbed off on the rest of us. And here we are three albums, three tours, four tours later — well, five tours later, if you count the Epitaph [farewell tour in 2011 and 2012] — and we're still going strong. I mean, we're motoring. We're loving it. We really are."
Hill went on to note that he feels Firepower and Invincible Shield are two of Judas Priest's strongest records, and who can argue with that? Have you heard either one of those records? They're friggin' incredible, especially for a band that's been going at it for roughly five decades.
"I [feel the same way], yes. I do, very much so. It's something we always try and do, is try and take a step forward with each album. I mean, you're learning stuff all the time, and whatever we learn, we try and put it into the next project. And we've done that right from the very start, right from way back in early '70s. And it's important that you do it, because it keeps you modern and it keeps you relevant. And you can sort of make that connection with the younger fans, which is important.
"I mean, the original fans are all our age, and they're all sort of expiring. But we've been able to make that connection with the younger people. And you look down from stage, and you see people in late teens, early twenties, what have you. And they're loving it, and it's not just the new stuff that they're loving — they're singing along to the older stuff, 20, 30 years old, what have you. So you've got them interested in that and they've gone back into the heritage of the band and started to look at some of the earlier material. And it's great news — not just for us, but it's great news for metal in general, that these people are still getting interested into it."
