JUDAS PRIEST Wanted To 'Create A Live-Sounding Album' With 'Redeemer Of Souls'

Ben Smith of VH1.com recently conducted an interview with JUDAS PRIEST members Rob Halford (vocals),Glenn Tipton (guitar) and Richie Faulkner (guitar). You can watch clips from the chat below.

Asked what made them change their mind about going on the road again after announcing their "farewell" tour in 2010, Halford said: "Well, just to try and set the record straight again, I wish we could find another word other than 'farewell,' because we were trying to get the word across to our wonderful fans around the world that this wasn't a farewell tour. It was just basically a celebration of everything that you loved about JUDAS PRIEST.

"On the 'Epitaph' tour, we played a song from every one of our studio recordings and it was just a real 101 of everything that you love about this band's recorded history.

"And then, also, just to explain that we won't be going out on these massive schleps anymore. Two years [on tour] is a long time for anybody.

"We are still going to go out and we are especially excited because we're going to be supporting [the upcoming JUDAS PRIEST album] 'Redeemer Of Souls' now."

Regarding what it is about heavy metal music that still gets them excited after all these years, Tipton said: "Just a general love for JUDAS PRIEST music and heavy metal as well.

"You know, through the years, many bands have disowned the tag when it became unfashionable to be heavy metal. We've always been puzzled by that. We've always been proud to be a heavy metal band and I think the fans can detect that. They know when you're genuine and we just love to go out and play our style of heavy metal."

Added Faulkner: "It's amazing, obviously, being the newest member of the band not having that 40-year career yet. But the amazing sense of community and family that you experience every night with the fans and that's exciting to anyone to just be part of that family, community, tribe, clan, whatever you want to call it, and we're all the same. We all love metal as much as the next person. We're up there and it's just like a big community spirit. That's a really exciting thing to experience as well."

JUDAS PRIEST also spoke about what it is they were looking to achieve artistically on "Redeemer Of Souls".

"We never ever sit down and kind of premeditate what we're going to do," Halford said. "That's the great purity of PRIEST's music. It does come from the heart. We just sit down with a bunch of guitars and the riffs start cranking and we put the vocal melodies together and so on. So it comes from a very pure source.

"I think this was an opportunity after 'Nostradamus', our first concept record, which we had an amazing time putting together, but enough time had passed from it to kind of want to reaffirm who we are, which is a classic British heavy metal band. So with that thought in mind, the metal started roaring, and we feel that all of these songs from 'Redeemer Of Souls' reemphasize that statement about what this band is trying to be in the heavy metal world."

Added Glenn: "What we intended to do with this album is predominately create a live-sounding album. The guitars were all mic'ed up. The drums aren't programmed, they're played. We stripped down Rob's vocals to a bare minimum of effects and just wanted to play.

"First and foremost, JUDAS PRIEST are a great live band and that's what we wanted to achieve in the studio."

Read the entire interview at VH1.com.

"Redeemer Of Souls" album artwork:

"Redeemer Of Souls" single artwork: