Rob Halford Has "Always Wanted to Make a Blues Record"

But not before a new Judas Priest album arrives

Photo: Aaron Rubin

BY Calum SlingerlandPublished May 5, 2021

When not Screaming for Vengeance with Judas Priest, Rob Halford has recorded Christmas albums and dreamed of fronting a black metal project. Now, we can add a blues album to the frontman's list of musical endeavours.

Speaking with podcaster Kyle Meredith, Halford spoke about work on a new solo effort inspired by the blues, alongside the same crew he worked with on 2019 seasonal outing Celestial.

"I've been working on — well, I say I, my brother, Nigel, and my nephew Alex, [son of Judas Priest bassist Ian Hill], on bass, and our friend [Jon] Blakey on guitar, those guys have been putting together the foundations for quite a while now," he shared. "We have enough material to make a record. I've just gotta find the words and put the voice on it at some point."

In terms of a release timeline, Halford shared that he and his crew will get to the album following a "glorious waiting-to-launch 50th-anniversary Priest tour and another Priest record," which would mark his main outfit's first since 2018's Firepower.

However, from the sounds of things, he may already have instrumentals tracked and ready to go. "It's all in [my] phone — I've got the album in this phone — and it's great," he continued. "It's gonna be a special moment, 'cause I've always wanted to make a blues record."

Halford added, "The only thing that I threw at the guys was do what you feel you wanna do in terms of ideas. I did give 'em a list of some of my favourite blues styles and blues performers as a little bit of a template for the guys to bounce off of.

"You could go into one specific area and stay in that place and focus [on that and make] little subtle changes here and there, but much like the Celestial album, I think this effort should just be a little texture of every taste of all these different blues flavours."

Halford had hinted at parlaying his love of the genre into an album last year, sharing with podcast Paltrocast With Darren Paltrowitz the following:

It's something I want to do because I want to explore what my voice can do in that wonderful world. That's how I learned to do a lot of that soaring, sweeping, and screeching. And also I discovered that I've got a voice that can go in different octaves, directions, and different kinds of projections. It's a combination of a sense of adventure and just being inspired by those guys, those wonderful singers. It's a mixture of everything but mainly a discovery of what the voice can do.

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