Even CNN has covered this.

Awesome!

I don't know what to think of this. Although the last Priest album with Halford, "Painkiller", was an awesome CD from start to finish, Halford's solo stuff from Fight's War Of Words to Resurrection and Crucible are awesome as well. On the other hand Judas Priest's albums without Halford are pretty weak efforts, or at least Jugulator is. I think Halford had one crap album with Fight, but for the most part is real good solo so I don't know if he'll be able to inspire some more good work from Tipton and Co. But if they can pull off another Painkiller I'm stoked.

Interesting parallel with Iron Maiden and Bruce Dickinson there... while in exile the frontman's solo works, in particular "Accident Of Birth" and "The Chemical Wedding" were brilliant masterpieces, while Maiden's output during that period was mediocre at best.


I rather liked the direction the reunited Maiden took with "Brave New World". Apparently they're releasing a new one this Septemer, "Dance With Death" - early news indicates a concept album with lots of long songs Hopefully Priest will gain their much-vaunted coherence and tight integration last found in "Painkiller".

All this is making me cautiously optimistic for the future of metal - it's been too long since the grunge invasion...

Edit: Changed quote date and time to ISO 8601 format.

Yeah, I think the same. Accident Of Birth and The Chemical Wedding are definitely classics and I haven't tired of listening to them. Of course Roy Z was a major collaborator on Accident/Chemical and Halford's Ressurection/Crucible so I think he's having a great influence on both Dickinson and Halford. And I'd imagine a new Priest album with Halford would be pretty intense, probably like his last two solo albums. And it'lll be good to get Halford OFF the album covers though, because his gay biker look doesn't really give any indication of what's really on the album.