JUDAS PRIEST's IAN HILL On Touring: 'We Just Want To Keep Doing It While We Can'

JUDAS PRIEST bassist Ian Hill has told Gannett Wisconsin Media in a new interview that the band has no plans of stopping anytime soon.

"I think what keeps us going is the love of the game. We all love what we do," Hill said. "It's something, when I look back, there's a sense of pride that I've been able to do it all of these years."

He continued: "We're going to do it as much while we can. You might think, 'Okay, I might retire, I've had enough of this.' In fact, you feel like that after every tour and then after a couple of months, you're ready to get back at it again. You get those itchy fingers again.

"Three of us now are a certain age and the time we can't do it anymore is not that far away. It will be a huge blow to any of us, so we just want to keep doing it while we can."

Part of the reason for PRIEST's renewed energy is the addition of guitarist Richie Faulkner, who replaced co-founding PRIEST axeman K.K. Downing in 2011.

"Yeah, it was a big hit [when Downing retired]," Hill said. "It sort of came out of the blue there, but he must have been thinking about it for a long time about retiring. Richie stepped into those great big shoes and filled them. It's been a bit of blessing in disguise. He's a younger player and brings a lot of enthusiasm, lots of incentive and he's rubbed off on the rest of us as well."

JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford recently told the "Sixx Sense With Nikki Sixx" radio show that the band "can't afford to wait three years, or five years now, to make" the follow-up to last year's "Redeemer Of Souls" album. He explained: "The clock is ticking, you know. And especially while the band is buzzing and the energy's there creatively. We had so much stuff happening in the studio, we had to put the blocks on because we were on a time schedule with the label. So we do have some stuff kind of left over from 'Redeemer Of Souls'. We'll be heading out for the rest of this tour 'till Christmas time, take a break, and then more than likely in the studio early of 2016 and see how quickly we can turn this around. It won't be a rush job, because we treasure everything that we do. But I think that the mindset is there to make this record efficiently and hopefully have it out there for our PRIEST family as soon as we can."

"Redeemer Of Souls" was released in July 2014. The follow-up to 2008's double-disc concept album "Nostradamus" was billed as a return to JUDAS PRIEST's heavy-metal roots.

"Redeemer Of Souls" sold around 32,000 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 6 on The Billboard 200 chart.