Judas Priest

Richie Faulkner speaking Swedish


He apparently lived in Sweden for a bunch of years, selling hot dogs out of lorries and hot dog stands. His pronounciation and general accent is really, really good. Dude even uses typical slang fill-in words.
 
Richie Faulkner speaking Swedish


He apparently lived in Sweden for a bunch of years, selling hot dogs out of lorries and hot dog stands. His pronounciation and general accent is really, really good. Dude even uses typical slang fill-in words.
I've lived with my Swedish partner for 7 years and still can't speak a word of that language.
 
Saw Judas Priest yesterday. Man, it was awesome. Rob's high notes were the best out of all the Priest gigs I've been to (2008-onwards), and he's been pretty damn good the past 10 years, though he sounded tired the last 4 songs - I suppose there's a reason why the last ones are rather chill mid range singing. Sneap is a lot better guitar player now than he was back in 2018. He does his leads justice and he allows himself a little more stage presence than he did on the Firepower tour. Richie played as awesome as always and his KK Victim of Changes solo is always a highlight where he abuses the floyd tremolo even more than KK does. The set list was pretty cool, although I had seen all but 3-4 songs live before, but that didn't matter, I had a great fucking time.

I haven't found a video of Rocka Rolla yet, but it was a kind of funny moment when Rob seemed to forget the lyrics for a few lines and resorted to (what sounded like) gibberish singing.



 
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Respect. Maiden's stance regarding subject, disappointed me very much. Like cowards "let's not alienate our fanbase". I am starting to believe speculations that Steve is anti vaxxer and conspiracy theories suporter. Sorry. :facepalm:
 
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Something curious about Priest...Live! (1987) live album: ''A double live album was not the first idea broached at the time, though. According to Priest biographer Neil Daniels, Priest initially considered a double LP that included one live disc and one disc of unreleased studio material''.

Now that would have been great. The material from Twin Turbos, I guess (songs like ''Under The Gun'', ''Fighting For Your Love'' and others).

I wish Maiden would do something like that.
 

Rob: ''I used to watch MAIDEN most nights and look and go, 'Man, these guys are gonna be huge.' Just the songs, the energy on stage, just everything about them just screamed that they were gonna be a massive band. So, for us to be working together for some of those dates was remarkable. I was in Denmark just recently talking to Steve, and Nicko was there, and both of us were just full of metal memories.
As I've said many times, it was the start of a decade as well, and every decade in rock and roll, at the beginning of every decade exciting things happen. Like the start of the '90s - everybody was dropping really strong records in the '90s. So, yeah, what a great time for metal. The first five years of the '80s was just crazy. It's that kind of rivalry, a good rivalry. It's a fun rivalry. But I think both bands have admired each other throughout the metal years, and it would be a spectacular event - PRIEST and MAIDEN together''.
 

Rob: ''I used to watch MAIDEN most nights and look and go, 'Man, these guys are gonna be huge.' Just the songs, the energy on stage, just everything about them just screamed that they were gonna be a massive band. So, for us to be working together for some of those dates was remarkable. I was in Denmark just recently talking to Steve, and Nicko was there, and both of us were just full of metal memories.
As I've said many times, it was the start of a decade as well, and every decade in rock and roll, at the beginning of every decade exciting things happen. Like the start of the '90s - everybody was dropping really strong records in the '90s. So, yeah, what a great time for metal. The first five years of the '80s was just crazy. It's that kind of rivalry, a good rivalry. It's a fun rivalry. But I think both bands have admired each other throughout the metal years, and it would be a spectacular event - PRIEST and MAIDEN together''.

I love how genuine Rob is. He didn't take Maiden touring with Priest in the past so seriously like K.K. did (what a salty boomer he is). Unfortunately Bruce has thrown some shade at Rob in previous years for using a teleprompter but Rob has just taken it on the chin and given a dignified response. He's a class act through and through!
 
My wish is for Priest and Maiden to do a co-headlining tour next year, both touring for their new albums. They would be playing for 1hr and 45 minutes which is the same amount of time they’re are playing on their current tour. No opening band of course.

Priest: 18:55-20:40

Maiden: 21:10-22:55
I agree, although they should do a joint final encore of "The One You Love To Hate"
 

Richie played a snippet of Pantera's Cowboys From Hell before Diamonds and Rust for the first time on the tour.
I love that he always tries something new on the shows.
 
Mark Wilkinson about his Priest album covers (the info is from here):

Ram It Down (1988) - ''There was an idea to have a metal fist striking an anvil but in the end we kept the fist and got rid of the anvil''.

Painkiller (1990) - ''There's an element of bringing the Angel character back from 'Sad Wings of Destiny' but changing it in some way. Updating him as maybe a metal character, a cyborg character. There was talk it would maybe be a guy on a motorbike with the metallic angel behind him but I couldn't make that work. So it was the Angel actually riding the bike. The bike wheels having blades worked perfectly. The idea was to develop a character that could carry on forwards and link up throughout the next few albums''.

Angel Of Retribution (2005) - ''The idea with 'Angel of Retribution' was to have it quite simple – no explosions or anything like that and think 'Angel of the North'. I don't know why but that cropped up in one of the conversations. Something very iconic and simpler with a very plain background. One of the drawings I did actually had the Angel in a volcanic environment with lots of fire spitting, but we'd kind of done that before so we decided to keep it simple as the Angel was such a strong figure''.

Nostradamus (2008) - ''I worked on that one in tandem with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There was always a plan to have the Four Horsemen but I don't think that was a cover particularly. So they asked to keep working on that concept but also on a portrait of Nostradamus but make it more dynamic in some way. Because that album was a real departure – a metal opera if you will – we also didn't use the Priest logo''.

Redeemer Of Souls (2014) - ''The ideas around that were let's keep the Angel in some way and find a different way of approaching it. Maybe a Mad Max vibe. That was pretty much the brief that I had. I found that a little difficult to envisage and I always think of Mad Max as the costume and a long, tattered Clint Eastwood-style coat. Then I had to imagine what the body of this cyborg character would look like. It couldn't be the same as anything I'd done before so I took almost like an organic approach to the metal. In the end I really enjoyed doing that one''.

BONUS:

Firepower (2018) - ''I did everything on it apart from the front cover. I did the back cover with the emblem on fire which Rob really liked. He said it reminded him of Excalibur, like a sword. That was just one of many ideas floating around from the band. They weren't absolutely sure what they wanted and it sort of changed and developed. I put in three or four different proposals for the cover but they didn't really feel it was quite right. I think Richie knew Claudio and just asked him to come up with some ideas and he came up with a rough version of what you see as the final album cover. They sent it to me and said 'What do you think?' and I said 'That's it! It's brilliant. Use that.' I think they were quite surprised that I would say that ha ha! But I'd reached a point where I was a bit stuck for ideas and when I saw that I thought it just works. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
It is quite stylised and I love the way it has the logo at that same angle. It's a perfect representation of what they were after. They were talking about having some sort of metallic creature but forget the wings, we're not going for wings this time. They weren't worried about developing that character any more. They just wanted some machine, some huge metallic monster with all guns blazing
''.

- the Jugulator cover is omitted, unfortunately. I think it's one of his best covers (the full artwork, not the one the band chose).

His favorite Priest album covers are: Sad Wings Of Destiny (one of his all time favorites) and Screaming For Vengeance.
 
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