
In a recent interview with Shaggy from 94.9 and 104.5 The Pick, JUDAS PRIEST bassist Ian Hill shared that guitarist Richie Faulkner‘s addition to the band played a significant role in their decision to continue touring nearly 14 years after announcing their “farewell” tour.
Hill said (as transcribed by Blabbermouth): “Richie Faulkner. [Laughs] Yeah, he came, he replaced Ken [original PRIEST guitarist K.K. Downing], who went off to do his own thing. Of course, the whole idea was to slow down a little bit and to take the workload down a notch. But Richie came along with boundless enthusiasm and all this energy, and he just sort of rubbed off on the rest of us. And here we are three albums, three tours, four tours later — well, five tours later, if you count the [2011-2012] Epitaph [‘farewell’] tour — and we’re still going strong. I mean, we’re motoring. We’re loving it. We really are.”
When Shaggy pointed out that JUDAS PRIEST‘s last two albums, 2024’s Invincible Shield and 2018’s Firepower, rank among the strongest releases in the band’s catalog, Ian responded: “I [feel the same way], yes. I do, very much so. It’s something we always try and do, is try and take a step forward with each album. I mean, you’re learning stuff all the time, and whatever we learn, we try and put it into the next project. And we’ve done that right from the very start, right from way back in early ’70s. And it’s important that you do it, because it keeps you modern and it keeps you relevant.
“And you can sort of make that connection with the younger fans, which is important. I mean, the original fans are all our age, and they’re all sort of expiring. But we’ve been able to make that connection with the younger people. And you look down from stage, and you see people in late teens, early twenties, what have you. And they’re loving it, and it’s not just the new stuff that they’re loving — they’re singing along to the older stuff, 20, 30 years old, what have you. So you’ve got them interested in that and they’ve gone back into the heritage of the band and started to look at some of the earlier material. And it’s great news — not just for us, but it’s great news for metal in general, that these people are still getting interested into it.”
PRIEST previously revealed the dates for their 2025 “Shield Of Pain” European tour. The 12-date journey will begin on June 14, 2025, in Oslo, Norway, and wrap up on July 20, 2025, in Oberhausen, Germany. See full dates here.
Reeder, the visionary behind Metal Addicts, has transformed his lifelong passion for metal into a thriving online community for metal aficionados. As a fervent devotee of black metal, Reeder is captivated by its dark, atmospheric, and often unorthodox soundscapes.