Judas Priest's classic album Painkiller turned 30 years old on September 3, and vocalist Rob Halford certainly wants to celebrate. Halford recently told the Jeremy White Podcast the band is looking into different ways to celebrate the album's birthday, but hasn't landed on anything specific yet.
"We're looking at all the opportunities. I'll tell you, these kind of things creep up on you," said Halford. "But Painkiller is a very special album to Priest and to the metal world for everything that it stands for and still gives to people. And we're aware of that. So we as a band and management and the label, we're always looking at opportunities to celebrate these milestones. And so we just direct everybody to the main Priest account on Instagram and Facebook and whatever, Twitter, and that's where all the news is. But there's definitely gonna be some kind of a party."
Halford also spoke about the iconic drum intro the title tracked, performed by none other by then-new drummer Scott Travis.
"It happened organically. We were writing all the songs for the record. We finished doing all the writing," said Halford. "And then back in the album world, making albums, like we still do as a band — we make records which are called albums which take you through the songs that we represent ourselves with at that time, whenever we do it — this 'Painkiller' track, which ended up being the title track… And sometimes the title track doesn't necessarily have to lead the record off. But it just felt such a potent statement.
"In all of the songs that we'd written, we felt that this had so much to say and that because it needed this kind of extraordinary opening — the drums instead of a screaming voice or wailing guitars — we thought, 'Let's go for it.' And what a great way to introduce Scott for the first time, as it was then, with Priest, with that particular record. It still lights up the room. Whenever we play 'Painkiller' live and Scott's there by myself on the stage doing that opening thing, fans go absolutely nuts. It's a bit of metal iconography right there. It's a glorious statement."
