JUDAS PRIEST's HALFORD: 'The Band Is Firing On All Cylinders Now'

JUDAS PRIEST members Rob Halford, Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing spoke to Billboard.com earlier this week about the group's upcoming studio album, "Angel of Retribution", due March 1 via Epic. It's Halford's first album with the band since 1990's "Painkiller" and was produced by Roy Z, who has previously worked on solo albums from HALFORD and IRON MAIDEN's Bruce Dickinson. The set will be bundled with a concert DVD shot in a bullring in Valencia, Spain.

Writing for "Angel of Retribution", which is still being sequenced, began in October 2003 and continued on and off this year while JUDAS PRIEST was on the road. It was another first for the band, as it had never stopped working on an album to go on tour before.

"We didn't even intend to take a break, but the fans were going crazy," Halford told Billboard.com. "They wanted to see the band; they didn't want to wait. Like we've said all along, the fans are a big part of the reunion story because they've been consistently wanting this forever."

"It was a really good plan, to be honest," added Downing. "Looking back, I think, to just say, 'OK, gonna lock yourself away for all that amount of time and just concentrate on one thing,' that's quite a tall order."

"It wasn't easy to write this album in the sense that everybody's watching, everybody's waiting and obviously you're under the microscope," Tipton said. "I think if we tried too hard to write to order, we would have made a big mistake, so all we did is sit down and wrote naturally."

The group have announced a month's worth of European tour dates, beginning Feb. 23 in Copenhagen. The trek will reach North America later in the year.

Halford concluded, "Obviously you face your physical limitations, but the band is firing on all cylinders now. It's a full roar, and there's no end in sight. There's definitely a new energy and a revitalization that's just been brought about by the reunion."

As first reported here on Dec. 13, songs set to appear on the CD include "Judas Rising", "Deal With The Devil", "Worth Fighting For", "Hellrider" and "Revolution", with the latter track expected to arrive at radio stations in early 2005.

According to a BLABBERMOUTH.NET source who has heard the aforementioned tracks, "This album is unmistakably JUDAS PRIEST...no other band sounds quite like them. The songs we've heard pay tribute to classic PRIEST albums of years gone by, yet have a fully modern sound as well. This is pure metal and it sounds huge."