• AllMyVinyl #141
• Band: Judas Priest
• Album Title: Invincible Shield
• Release Date: 6 Mar 2024
• Date purchased: 16 Feb 2024
• Location purchased: Amazon
• Color of vinyl: black
• Number of discs: 2
• Links: [ Wikipedia | Discogs | Band Website | Complete album on Youtube ]

Today’s entry in my vinyl series is the most recent studio album from Judas Priest – 2024’s “Invincible Shield”.   This is another album that came out in 2024 that I bought solely because the band is a habit purchase.  I’d been into Priest for so long that I’ll buy any new (studio) album they put out, so when this popped up, I snapped it up.  Unfortunately also because it came out in the spring of 2024, I was dealing with the worst of the side effects from my cancer treatments, and while I did listen to the album and really liked a few of the tracks, I never fully digested the album to the point where it gets one of those slots in your mind where it can sit on a pedestal and go “That’s badass”.   Now don’t misunderstand me.  The album isn’t like totally new to me today when I went to listen.  I just didn’t get to listen to it like 10-20 times in the span of the first two months of release to really burn it into my brain.  I do recall about half the songs from memory just looking at the list of tracks today.  So this listen will be a mix of reliving something and re-discovering a track.  I’m kind of in the middle with this.

Normally when I write these intros, I talk about my past with the album, what I remember about buying it (especially if it’s one of my old 80’s vinyls), but this time I can’t do that.  this album came out just a tad over a year ago, and as it’s still their most recent, there’s no backstory.  It’s Judas Priest.  It’s their 19th album overall, and while I don’t have much of their output on vinyl, I’ve either bought or listened to everything along the way, so another one from them kind of IS the backstory.  It’s what I call “auto purchase”.  If they put out a new one, I’m buying it.  Simple as that, so I got this one as it was the first one they put out after I got a record player in 2020.   That’s all the intro for this one really.

A few times in this piece, I’m going to refer to my friend Jim.  One of my music buddies I text constantly (maybe too much?) to chat about things.  I met him through my Black Sabbath site originally some time back, and we’ve remained friends.  He did live with me in Texas for awhile (he moved out a year or two ago), but there’s a story to tell later on, I just wanted to set him up as he’ll pop up a few times here.

The band on this one is the same band that was on the last three studio albums (2024’s Invincible Shield, 2018’s Firepower, & 2014’s Redeemer of Souls).  Most of Priest has been pretty solid lineup wise a long time, but for completeness’ sake, the lineup here is:

• Rob Halford – vocals
• Glenn Tipton – guitar
• Richie Faulkner – guitar
• Ian Hill – bass
• Scott Travis – drums

The album was produced by Andy Sneap, who has produced Firepower as well.  He’s also is the touring guitarist in place of Glenn due to Glenn’s Parkinson’s.  Scott Travis has played drums on everything since 1990’s “Painkiller”.  Hill has played bass (or at least been credited as having done so) on every Priest studio album. He’s not a founding member, but is awfully close.  Halford has song lead on every Priest album except the two produced when he wasn’t there (1997’s Jugulator & 2001’s Demolition) since the OG one in 1974.  Faulkner is the new boy, replacing KK Downing as the second guitarist, and he’s been in the band since the Epitaph tour in 2011, so the band has been pretty stable overall.

I told Jim a few months back when we were talking about Priest that I thought this was a worthy successor to Firepower, which itself was a great album (don’t have Firepower on vinyl tho).

Panic Attack – This starts off with a riff and vibe that reminds me of Iron Maiden a bit.  We don’t stay there of course, but it sounds like a Maiden intro at the start.  About a minute in, we get that Judas Priest sound that we’ve known for a long time.  While not as “in your face” as say the song Painkiller was on that album, this is definitely a good opener.  It’s got an aggressive sound – hits all the marks in what you want from a Judas Priest song.  Really dig the guitar solo.  Great stuff.  Good, fast paced song with a great riff, and a great vocal hook from Rob.  Great way to start off a Priest album – no doubt.

The Serpent and the King – There’s no letdown.  Song 2 starts off with a great new guitar riff that’s an instant killer.  Quickly after that it’s some rather traditional Rob Halford shrieking.  Can’t make out half of what he’s saying here – gotta have the lyric sheet going with this one.  Great chorus.  It’s basically just singing the song’s title a few times, but I like it.  But what I like better is the guitar riffing here.  Some great stuff on this track for sure.  I wrote all that before we got to the guitar solo part of this song, and the rest of it is no change.  Guitars are the major draw for me on this one.

Invincible Shield – Fuck the guitars are great on this album.  Third song in a row with some killer guitar shit going on.  This is the longest song on the album at 6:21, but it doesn’t feel like it.  Great solid Priest song.  Not sure what to make of Rob’s vocal delivery when singing the song title – his being British probably coming through there.  Great fast paced Priest song.  Some of the guitar solo sounds like a classic Priest guitar sound from the 80’s – nice throwback there.  Song ends with a nice long guitar outro which I quite liked.

Devil in Disguise – This one isn’t as screaming in your face with its riffing, but it’s got a nice solid beat which just a little changeup in its delivery so it’s not just the same exact beat the ENTIRE way through the song.  First song that I didn’t think was a total banger, but it’s not bad by any stretch.  Just not as top tier as the stuff so far on this album.

Gates of Hell – With a song title like this, you’d think the music would be like super ominous or something along those lines.  Black Sabbath has a track by the same title, and that one is far more ominous.  This one is nothing like that.  The main riff that runs through it sounds like something I’ve heard before, but I can’t place it.  It changes pace in the middle to something that’s less “in your face” than standard Priest fare.  It’s not ballad level slower at all, but it’s not the fastest song around.  I guess I can’t get my head past the song title not matching the music that comes with it.  :)

Crown of Horns – Back to some good riffing.  We start the album off with what’s basically a guitar solo – a true one as there’s no other instruments for the first 20 seconds of the song, and the entire band doesn’t kick in until about a minute in.  However once it does, things slow down a bit.  The verses are definitely more geared towards Rob, as the guitars take a back seat once Rob starts singing.  I mean one of the lyrics are “I’d wait so helpless but live was waiting” – those don’t sound like typical Priest lyrics.  The chorus is quite nice though – I love the sound the entire band puts together during the chorus.  Nice guitar solo too – something I’m saying a lot on this album.  Not a fast song at all, but quite liked this even though it’s not a “riff your face off” kind of song.

As God is My Witness – OK, THIS song is a “riff your face off” because it immediately starts there.  This sounds like something they might have done on the Jugulator album (which I think is underrated, but I digress).  Fast, and typical Priest screaming guitars.  I also feel Scott Travis in my face here too.  This is one of the songs that i didn’t remember by title, but man, what a track I overlooked.  It basically hits you in the face from 0:01 of the song and doesn’t really let go.  The kind of song that if had come out when I was younger probably would have contributed to my overall tinnitus – as this is a “max the volume, roll the windows down, and fuck it – EVERYONE is listening to Judas Priest” kind of song as I go down the street.

Trial by Fire – Great rhythm section here.  I don’t call out Ian Hill much as he’s just always there in the background, but man it works well here.  Priest songs are usually heavy af anyway – I mean it’s the nature of who they are.  But on this one it feels even heavier.  I love the way the guitar sound mixes on top of the underlying beat laid down by Hill & Travis.  I particularly love the crunchy sound that kicks in right after Rob stops singing at about 2:30.  Some seriously heavy fucking crunch in this song – one of my favorite kind of sounds by JP.  One of my favorite tracks on the album as a whole, and there’s a lot to choose from here.  Song ends with an extended scream by Rob which is especially impressive when you realize his real life age.  Killer track.

Escape from Reality – That’s two songs in a row where I can clearly hear Ian Hill – right before the vocals start, we get a CLEAR Ian sound.  This one has a guitar riff in the first minute that reminds me of something I’ve heard elsewhere before, but I can’t place it.  I want to say something off of Black Sabbath’s “13” album, but I’m not 100% sure about that. Once the full band kicks in, that’s not as easily heard – but I have to confess being hung up on “haven’t I heard that before” took this song down a bit, because I kept trying to figure out where I heard that before.  As we all know trying to think of another song while you’re listening to a different one is hard to do. Not a bad song – I admit it’s more my reaction to it than the song itself guiding what I’m writing here.

Sons of Thunder – The shortest track on the album at 2:59.  This is one of those songs that’s “there”.  Not filler, not a bad track, but it doesn’t have the most inventive anything, but when your’e done listening it’s “OK, another Judas Priest album track”.  I do like some of the background vocals on this one.  Not a thing I usually say on a JP song.  Did find myself head banging in the solo section, which is sadly too short.  I got into that and it was over right away.  I got into jamming with this by the end of the track, and then it was over.  Actually kind of wished this had a little more.  Interesting swing in my mood from the start to the end of the track.

Giants in the Sky – Love the guitar sound that starts this off.  Once again, something I’ve said a bunch on this album. Another track where I dig the underlying beat.  Rob’s vocals don’t move the needle a ton for me here, but man does the beat do that.  Found myself doing the air drums while the song was on with my feet.  It does have a change of pace in the middle where it gets slower, and has a much different sound to the solo.  Not quite acoustic, but it’s in that general vicinity.  The lyrics talk about “your love getting me through the day”.  Have Priest lyrics always been like that and I never noticed?  The song picks up again for the finale, where it ends with the great beat I liked from earlier in the song.  I was about to say it wasn’t going to feel like the best album closer, but then they change it once more and do something a little different with the ending which does make it a better “album closer”.

The digital album has three other studio tracks (Fight of Your Life, Vicious Circle, & The Lodger), but I’m not going to cover them, since they’re not on my vinyl copy.

Well, as I said before, I thought this was a good album when I didn’t fully digest it.  I listened today and yeah, it IS a great album.  As I said before, when you’re going through treatments for cancer, your mind is in places you never thought it would be.  It wasn’t a whole pile of depression or anything, but things like “new albums by bands” didn’t usually break through into the part of one’s psyche where you can enjoy things like that beyond a superficial level.  But today I was like “Oh yeah, this is even better than the good album I already thought it was”.   There’s little I don’t like on here, and the one song I wrote even remotely negatively about was more my own brain thinking a riff came from some other song.   I read somewhere that they’re gonna track a crack at another studio album.  Given the age of the various band members (Hill – 73, Halford – 73, Tipton – 77, Travis – 63, Faulkner – 43)… and the fact that one of the primary songwriters is dealing with Parkinsons… time is not a friend to the future of Judas Priest.  They just celebrated their 50th anniversary, and while the band has been around longer than that (formed in 1968 originally, so 57), it’s been 50 since their first album.  That they’re still out there putting out quality metal after all this time is something that should be applauded.  Go buy the album. Don’t stream it, don’t pirate it – go BUY it.  They deserve to be rewarded for doing this in an age that doesn’t usually reward bands for doing this at all.

It’s been awhile since I saw Judas Priest live – the last time I can recall for sure was 2008 when I briefly met them backstage during the Metal Masters tour with Heaven & Hell Black Sabbath.  I tried to see them a few years later with my friend Jim.  He drove up to Dallas, we had a great dinner, then headed downtown to Dallas as Priest was playing a place called ‘The Bomb Factory” in the West End.  I saw Black Sabbath there on the Cross Purposes tour back in 1994, but this day (28 Apr 2018), the monster that is parking reared its ugly head.  Jim and I drove around for nearly TWO FUCKING HOURS trying to find a safe place to park.  If you know the West End, some places can be a bit sketchy looking, and while I probably could have parked somewhere, we ended up not being able to find a spot.  Much cursing, and a lot of driving around in a circle, and we eventually just gave up and took off, eating our tickets.  I’ve never been back there since, as Priest has returned, and I turned down the chance to see a few other bands because of that experience there.  There’s no room for fucking parking in the West End for the most part (although Trees had a lot as I recall). This concert story doesn’t have anything to do with the album as such, but it was from a close enough era that I thought I’d get it out there.  This picture is the closest we got to the show that night – Jim took it right outside the venue that we couldnt’ get into.