ROB HALFORD On New JUDAS PRIEST Album, PANTERA Comparisons And Infamous 'Metal Is Dead' Comment

Metal-Rules.com recently conducted an interview with JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow:

On the status of the new JUDAS PRIEST CD, "Nostradamus":

Halford: I've been away for about a month while Glenn [Tipton] and K.K. [Downing] have been doing their final guitar overdubs. We're about to start mixing, so I'm going to see the boys in a few days time and then we'll be rockin' and roaring through the mixing sessions.

Metal-Rules.com: So your vocals are already laid down for the new album then?

Halford: Yeah, I completed those some time back. Everybody does their bits as you go along and normally I don't do my vocal work until the bulk of the recording has been done which is how it turned out and rhythm guitars and everything were laid and all the other instruments, but Glenn and K.K. have just been burning the midnight metal oil and getting all of their leads completed, so I'll be excited to hear what they've been doing. Then we get on with the mixing and the mastering and get it out for next year when the tour kicks off.

Metal-Rules.com: So we can probably expect something before the summer then, I take it?

Halford: I think so, yeah. I mean, you know the way it goes. Most bands hit the road when they've got a new release out there. It'll have been a couple of years since we've been back on the world circuit.

Metal-Rules.com: When JUDAS PRIEST does get out on the road again, is there any chance that any material from the two albums that you weren't on — "Jugulator" and "Demolition" — will be performed live?

Halford: Yeah and I've said this before that those two records are as important in the PRIEST world as everything else. Glenn, K.K. and I have talked about this and I'd welcome it. I think it would be an exciting moment for me to cover the tracks that my mate Tim ["Ripper" Owens] worked on while he was with the band. So again, anything is possible. Each time when we put a set list together, it gets increasingly difficult because we've got so many songs from so many records that we just have to look at the set list and figure out what the favorites are and go from there. Again, PRIEST fans around the world are always putting ideas upon what they'd like to hear us do, but I think it would be kind of fresh to pick maybe one or two tracks from both of those records and just give it the Metal God touch.

Metal-Rules.com: When [FIGHT's] "War Of Words" first came out you drew a lot of comparisons to PANTERA. Did you feel those comparisons were valid?

Halford: No. That again is something that always irritated me. I think if I hadn't have had such a wonderful time with PANTERA on the "Painkiller" tour in Europe and if I hadn't have had the pleasure to run down to Dallas for a day to work with the guys for the "Buffy The Vampire Slayer" movie on "Light Comes Out of Black", I don't think that would have been so much on the radar, under the spotlight. It irritated me because that's not the kind of thing I do. I don't chase after other people with my music. I try and be an innovator and the songs that I wrote for "War Of Words" — which I'd never done before because I usually work with a team of writers — I did all that myself in Phoenix, whatever year that was. It was just pouring out of me just because it'd been waiting to flow and go for a number of years and when we found the players for FIGHT and we started to rehearse the music in Phoenix, everybody had their own definitive sound and style in place and ready to work and so there was never a moment of saying, "Hey guys, you've got to get a sound like PANTERA," which is what the implication is. That would be absolutely fucking stupid, you know. Everybody had their way of playing and so it was just a case of recreating those very rough skeletal ideas that I presented to them and then going into the demo phase. I mean, you listen to the demos, which obviously is the first stage before production, and you can just sense the great energy and the real determination from everybody's performance.

Metal-Rules.com: I was hoping you could clear up one misconception. Did you leave JUDAS PRIEST to do FIGHT or were you still in JUDAS PRIEST when "War Of Words" was being written and recorded?

Halford: Well, that's a good question and the answer is that I was still connected to PRIEST while I was writing all of that music and looking for band players. It wasn't until I was finding myself in a position where the only way I could venture out to look at other record company affiliations did I see that the legal language in the contract was what I felt to be really severe and restrictive. I wasn't the only one going through it. I think [Bruce] Springsteen was going through it at the time and George Michael. Everybody was contesting the language and the language alluded to the fact that if you were going to step away from being in that band, in that contract, then you would be free to pursue other searches for other labels and that's what I had to do and of course that's when the proverbial shit hit the fan. I still insist today, in my own mind, that I didn't leave PRIEST. I left PRIEST in the legalese of it all, but it just came at a time when…you know that "Painkiller" tour and the Reno trial before it had been extremely difficult for us all on a personal level and in retrospect, we've said now that the best thing we should have done was to have taken two or three years off. We'd been working hard from "Rocka Rolla" pretty much consistently up until "Painkiller" and bands are human and sometimes you need to take a holiday but we never did (laughs). But that's really how the essence of it all came around. I mean, the thing that's more important to me is the fact that PRIEST was still PRIEST and you know the band was still there, the band was still working and that was a little bit of a comfort. I think I would have been full of remorse if the band had completely broken to pieces but that was not the case because Tim went in and did some fantastic work on "Jugulator" and "Demolition".

Metal-Rules.com: Going back to the TWO years, there was an interview that you have been famously quoted as saying that "metal is dead." Was there a defining moment that brought metal back to life for you again after the TWO project?

Halford: Oh well, that was an absolutely fucking stupid thing for me to say. I was just so emotional that day. I can remember I was sitting on my tour bus outside of the Hollywood Palladium in L.A. and I think the TWO band was working with RAMMSTEIN that night and I was just in a bitch mood (laughs). I said something which I…..you know, everybody has the freedom to be stupid and I was completely stupid that day. I've made amends in recent years about making that ridiculous comment. I think I was probably just reflecting on my own situation, frustrations that come with what you do and I think it was probably a Monday night, I don't particularly like Monday that much (laughs). Had it been Friday or Saturday, I'd have been in a different frame of mind. But I was just being a bit of a petulant rock star bitch that afternoon, so there you go. It's all water under the bridge now.

Read the entire interview at Metal-Rules.com.