Judas Priest - Firepower (2018) [Official Digital Download]

As the rockers of the 1960s and 70s enter their dotage, we spend our idle hours wondering how they might be coping with the stresses and strains of modern-day life. Now that Jimmy Page has become Led Zeppelin’s self-appointed archivist, we often imagine him down the local vegetable patch, metal detector in hand, searching for hidden treasures. (He got a whole allotment of love.) But truth can be stranger than fiction. It’s a fact that Rod Stewart enjoys nothing better than to play with his model trainset. That Eric Clapton banishes the blues by going fly-fishing. That Ronnie Wood loves to pore over his vintage stamp collection. And that former Judas Priest stalwart KK Downing has hung up his guitar and retired to play golf. (“Swinging or dodgy?” as Norman Vaughan might ask.)

But what of Priest themselves? No Earl Grey and Jaffa Cakes down the bowls club for these mighty meaty metal men. Come the year 2018, cometh the hour, and they’re still screaming for vengeance – at the top of their timeworn lungs. They’re still writing heavy-as-fuck new songs; still releasing heavy-as-fuck new albums. In the place of Downing these days is blond-haired lookalike Richie Faulkner, who has improved his act no end since leaving Lauren (daughter of Steve) Harris’s band. Each and every one of the songs on Priest’s latest full-length Firepower – and yes, we know Legs Diamond were there first – are three-way collaborations between fellow six-stringer Glenn Tipton, frontman Rob Halford and Faulkner himself. And hell, the latter doesn’t so much step up to the plate on this, the second album of Priest’s BOK (Beyond Our Ken) era, as trample it into tiny little pieces. All he needs is to don a floppy sombrero and all will be complete.

Tracklist:

01. Firepower
02. Lightning Strike
03. Evil Never Dies
04. Never the Heroes
05. Necromancer
06. Children of the Sun
07. Guardians
08. Rising From Ruins
09. Flame Thrower
10. Spectre
11. Traitors Gate
12. No Surrender
13. Lone Wolf
14. Sea of Red



All thanks go to the original releaser