Greater than 5 many years into their profession, Judas Priest have all the time been certainly one of metallic’s most reliably nice bands, probably as a result of the duty they really feel to the style weighs simply as closely because the music they make. They by no means need to let down their followers, the “heavy metallic maniacs,” as lead shrieker Rob Halford dubbed them way back, whilst they’ve pressed ahead within the face of adversity in recent times. Guitarist Glenn Tipton, a bona fide metallic icon identified for his electrifying solos, revealed he’d been identified with Parkinson’s illness in 2018, and a relative newcomer to the band, guitar hotshot Richie Faulkner, almost died onstage enjoying guitar in 2021 when his aorta ruptured. But Judas Priest have remained hell bent for leather-based and, undeterred, made one other album.
The title of their newest album, and nineteenth total, Invincible Protect, means that the self-proclaimed metallic gods are additionally hell bent for immortality. Half a century faraway from their debut, Rocka Rolla (and its unlucky soda-pop album cowl), Priest are sticking to the script they wrote many years in the past: charging guitar rhythms, virtuosic solos, percussive cacophonies, and Halford’s screeched sci-fi hellscapes. Hey, they have been arguably the primary band to embrace heavy metallic as a style (Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin contemplate the time period a putdown), in order that they’re entitled to ship the products nevertheless they see match.
Fortunately for them, the musicians possess the identical technical acumen as they did three many years in the past, once they recorded the pyrotechnic Painkiller, and Halford, at 72, can nonetheless summon a banshee squall that might wake the lifeless. They exhibit their skills all through Invincible Protect, and infrequently they hit on new and shocking concepts with their songwriting.
Though some Protect tracks really feel like Priest-by-numbers, the songs that actually hit really feel like lightning putting. On “Panic Assault,” Halford screams for vengeance in opposition to expertise, constructing to a hair-raising bridge: “Fiber optic, mass hypnotic/Wild neurotic memes/Cynicism, greed, is what you’re fed/Disconnecting from the World Huge Internet.” It’s a Luddite salvo that deserves its personal ironic TikTok dance (not that Halford would go online to see it). The very best second of the tune, although, comes when Halford screams, “Panic assault, panic assault, digitally insane,” resulting in a guitar solo that appears to rise out of regardless of the hell key the band has been enjoying in.
Though Invincible Protect doesn’t include any new anthems worthy of Priest classics like “Breaking the Legislation,” “You’ve Acquired One other Factor Comin’,” or “Painkiller,” and the album doesn’t encourage the general wow issue of their earlier report, 2018’s jaw-dropping Firepower, there are a number of moments the place the musicians transcend themselves. Priest have all the time been masters of in-between moments in songs that different bands appear to take as a right — bridges, prechoruses, and, in fact, solos — however Priest appear to make these sections of songs step exterior of themselves.
On the prechorus of “Satan in Disguise,” Halford’s voice, layered in concord with itself, reaches heavenward with a climbing melody that builds to his catchy, shouted refrain. But it surely’s the best way he presents that prechorus, with phrases like “Machiavellian shiv,” that makes “He’s a satan, satan in disguise” (phrases that may in any other case really feel generic) really feel so rewarding. Equally, “Escape From Actuality,” a tune that has been sitting in Tipton’s archive, advantages from a trippy break within the center by which Halford murkily sings, “Get misplaced in a psychedelic haze” earlier than he drops the impact, just like the status of a magic trick, to sing, “Levitating to a spot that may amaze” in a significant key. It makes for a pleasant break from the forcefulness of the stabbing refrain, “Agony/Escape from actuality brings you down.” And album nearer “Giants within the Sky,” Halford’s tribute to his late buddies Ronnie James Dio and Lemmy Kilmister, has a type of musical theater flare — suppose Andrew Lloyd Webber with jazz horns — that sticks in your head.
These moments present a break from extra predictable songs just like the singles “Trial by Fireplace” and “Crown of Horns.” Heavy is the crown certainly.
Sadly for the observe record, two of the very best songs on Invincible Protect can be found solely as bonus tracks to the deluxe version, which appears to be the model on streaming providers anyway. The bluesy “Combat for Your Life” struts with Seventies swagger, like an outtake from Priest’s beloved Stained Class album, and its looseness feels refreshing after a few of the remainder of the album’s extra inflexible guitar assaults. And serial killer–themed “The Lodger,” penned by Bob Halligan Jr. — songwriter of Eighties Priest gems “(Take These) Chains” and “Some Heads Are Gonna Roll” — feels much more theatrical than “Giants within the Sky,” as Halford sings, “Vengeance is miiiine,” over a jagged melody that sticks with you want a knife within the again.
Principally, Invincible Protect is the sound of metallic’s true believers spreading their message of salvation by way of headbanging. Somewhat over a decade in the past, they have been telling followers they might be embarking on a farewell tour; they even known as it the Epitaph World Tour. However right here they’re, nonetheless, combating the campaign for metallic, and nonetheless displaying that the style can aspire to greater than the visions of heavy metallic leather-based and bikes they pioneered years in the past.