Judas Priest originally hit the studio earlier this year to record drums for their new album. Now in an interview with ABC Audio, vocalist Rob Halford reveals that the band is back again to begin tracking the follow-up to 2018's Firepower. "We've stopped kicking the tires and now we're in tracking," he said.
"You can never have enough songs when you're making an album," Halford later added. "Songs that you didn't even know you had bits and pieces and fragments of, suddenly they become an incredibly important part of your record." Halford also spoke a little about how the music sounds so far, saying "it's good, because there are some elements in there that we've never… kind of discovered before."
Later when asked if the new record will surface sometime in 2023, Halford offered a resounding "meh." To sum up the entirety of my personal feelings, I'd like to quote Lloyd Christmas in saying "So you're telling me there's a chance. YEAH!"
Judas Priest has been working on new material with guitarist and producer Andy Sneap (Dream Theater, Exodus, Saxon, etc.). Guitarist Richie Faulkner said in a previous interview that the new music is more progressive than their 2018 album Firepower and has "that Killing Machine swagger."
"Whenever you start a record, you never know how it's gonna turn out. So you might start with an idea of what it's gonna be, and as it kind of rolls on, it comes out something different. So you don't quite know. And also it's really hard to sum up your own music, I find, without sounding really pretentious. But I think this one — it's not Firepower 2, I don't think. It's its own thing, it's its own animal. If anything, I would say it's a bit more progressive in places, and in places it's got a bit more of that Killing Machine swagger."
"I know everyone says, 'Oh, is it the next Painkiller?' or 'Is it the next…?' whatever… I don't know if they'd ever done it, but I know we've never done it when I've been in the band; we've never tried to recreate an album. It's always we try to create an album that stands on its own legs. So I think it's definitely a little bit more progressive than Firepower and, as I said, in places it's got a little bit of that Killing Machine angry swagger attitude going on. But again, as I said, we're waiting to see what it turns out like, 'cause it could turn out completely different."
