50 years on, Judas Priest are still laying down heavy-metal licks

Judas Priest are, along with Iron Maiden and Metallica, one of the most influential and enduring heavy-metal bands which are still active. Priest's debut album "Rocka Rolla" will be 50 years old this summer, and for band leader Rob Halford, it offers a time to take stock - while launching a new studio album - in the group's legendary half-century run.

"I think if you had tenure, if you had 50 years in the business and 50 years as a writer, there's bound to be blips on the landscape, otherwise you're not human, you know?" the 72-year-old told dpa in an interview in London.

Since the British group's founding in Birmingham in 1969, Judas Priest has come out with 17 studio albums, 15 of them with Halford. Now the 18th studio album, "Invincible Shield", is being released and is arguably the best album that Judas Priest has recorded in the past 20 or even 30 years.

"You never know," says Halford when asked about how the latest measures up with the group's past classics. "Can they make anything better than 'Painkiller'? Can they make anything better than 'British Steel'? Can they go one higher than 'Screaming for Vengeance'?" he asks, rhetorically speaking of Judas Priest in the third person.

Topping those albums is of course virtually ruled out. Still, "Invisible Shield" in many ways hails back to the glory 1980s years of Judas Priest. The intro of the opening song "Panic Attack" alone, mixing electric guitars with synthesizers, exudes a hint of "Turbo", the controversial album from 1986 that is now considered a cult record. After the furious-paced intro, the rock gets clearly harder. Halford and Co. on the new album seem to be moving acoustically somewhere between "Screaming for Vengeance" and "Defenders Of The Faith".

When told this, Halford shrugs. "That's just remarkable. I don't know that. I don't feel that way personally. This is how I love - your music, your creativity, how it moves into people and other dimensions and definitions start to come back at you. And those comparisons are great." But in the event, it was unplanned. "[Guitarist] Richie [Faulkner] loves to use this word 'organic' when he plays guitar. It's very organic...the past creeps into the present."

On "Invincible Shield" one hit follows another. "The Serpent And The Shield" and the title track are powerful heavy metal with the unmistakable Halford vocals. "Crown Of Horns" is a little softer, but a real earworm. The more you listen to "Invincible Shield", the more catchy tunes you'll hear, such as "Trial By Fire" and "Sons Of Thunder". Then there is the epic metal blast, "As God Is My Witness". This Priest album is simply fun.

The voice of Halford, who with his long white beard looks like a modern-day rock Methusaleh, is as powerful as ever with its precisely executed screams. You hear, in the album and when interviewing him, that he is an impassioned metal singer, one who listens critically to what the group has created. "And when you get all that right and you sit back and you listen to the work that you've made, man, it's the best feeling in the world. This band is still able to present metal at this level."

After five decades, the heavy-metal and hard-rock scene is nowadays much more open and diverse, says Halford, who came out publicly as gay in an MTV interview in 1998. Last year, he sang a duet ("Bygones") with country legend Dolly Parton, who released her first rock album. Something like this would have been unthinkable 30 or 40 years ago, when the heavy metal scene was still very straight macho. "So now there's so much freedom, and as you say, there is so much more acceptance that anything can happen," he says.

However, Judas Priest are remaining true to themselves in the best sense of the word. On "Invincible Shield", the band returns to their old strengths and delivers heavy metal at the highest level. The album was produced by Andy Sneap, who is taking the place of guitarist Glenn Tipton at concerts due to his Parkinson's disease. The British metal institution is starting its European tour in March.

"We've got to tick all the boxes," Halford says, naming such hits as "Living After Midnight", "Breaking The Law" and "Metal Gods" that simply cannot be missing from any concert program. "Your fans demand those songs and are entitled to them. But equally, you have to show the other reason that you're here is because, hey, we have a brand new album out, and here's a brand new song. We want to play for you now."

Initially, only "just a couple" of songs from the new album are planned for the upcoming concert tour, Halford says. "Then, as the album is digested and our fans connect to it, we'll expand it."