Label: Columbia Records
Release date: March 8, 2024
Production: Andy Sneap (Tom Allom – co-production on tracks 10 and 11)
Album length: 52.32 min
Genre: Heavy Metal
Rating: 8.5/10
Judas Priest, the undisputed icons of metal, in a way the biblical elders and founders of some of the essential tenets that have run through metal since forever in all its forms (and by the look of it, always will), have gone and done it again. Six years after the excellent “Firepower” (2018, RockLine review), they’ve dropped another album! Their 19th studio album in total. This is “Invincible Shield”!
A band that hasn’t had anything left to prove for ages simply keeps on soaking up the autumn of its life with full-blooded gusto. An extended autumn, or more precisely, a second renaissance and bloom. The new studio album is the proof: another excellent achievement, and one that was expected to chase the essence of its predecessor “Firepower”. “Invincible Shield” is bristling, spiked, full of ideas, fun and unshakable! Even though its musical recipe is crystal clear. The one and only! You can tie it to just two words: Judas and Priest! It’s hellishly punchy, dark and deadly, yet at the same time magnificently epic and theatrically musical! Everything, in other words, that you could ever want from Judas Priest!
Guitars sharp as a razor that give you goosebumps, so hellish that the devil himself would be scared of the hellishness, the contrasting torpedo-barrage of drums from the phenomenal Scott Travis, the dazzling bass of “eternal” Ian Hill, and the “indestructible” Rob Halford. The guy who turns 73 at the end of this August remains a vocal phenomenon! He’s remarkably versatile on the new album too. He showed off just as varied a vocal face on “Firepower” and made it clear even then that he was far from done. Once again, the spotlight in Rob Halford’s performance falls on his screaming and his range! How far he can take it. What heights! As if Halford hasn’t aged vocally by a single day since the mid-eighties. Without this vocal icon and his charisma, on top of that kept in unbelievable vocal shape, there would be nothing! Guaranteed!
The album’s opening and its ending are both hugely expressive, which means one of the key goals has been achieved. The opening, energy-honed “wrecker” Panik Attack, with twin guitars that sound like an air fleet coming in to land, and Halford in the middle-eight passage calling up associations with the classic Painkiller. Right after it the band explodes into the even darker Serpent And The King, with Halford out front again (his vocal in the verse is especially “venomous”). The title track is the longest composition on the album and one of its peaks. Even though it sounds sonically updated and current, it’s not hard to draw parallels in the phrasing to the “Screaming For Vengeance” days, and even further back. All the way to the album “Sin After Sin” (the transitional melody in the pre-chorus). Beneath the album’s modern production smolders an ember of passion tempered in the seventies! The classic Priest hallmarks, noticeable the whole way through!
As God Is My Witness is a track that delivers a vibrational catapult back to 1990 and the album “Painkiller”. Especially that very first opening phrase that kicks into the verse, with the double bass drum pedals rolling along (Rebel Leather pops straight into your head). Devil in Disguise and Gates Of Hell feel especially nostalgic on “Invincible Shield”, since the lead phrases of both songs shamelessly pal around with the rhetoric that inspired Judas Priest at the start of their career (the blues). The author of Sons Of Thunder is Glenn Tipton. It’s his only song that is entirely his own work. Tipton played the whole solo section in this track himself. We mustn’t forget that Glenn’s abilities have, sadly, been limited for quite a while now (Parkinson’s disease).
A story all its own on this album is the mini epic suite Crown of Thorns, with an especially cranked-up ultra-musicality that crawls under your skin in an instant. From head to toe. The mood crescendo is definitely captured in the chorus! With filigree-measured solos and ornamental three-part harmonizing, as well as a superbly placed atmospheric turn thanks to Halford’s magnificent melodies inside the “salty” (“multilayered”) middle-eight passage. The closer, a superb composition called Giants In The Sky, delivers similar feelings, and there Priest impress even by working in an acoustic instrumental passage. The right choice for pumping up the bombast at the very finale of the album, which wraps up with a classic ending and the obligatory Halford scream!
A special chapter of “Invincible Shield”, and of the band’s renaissance in general, is definitely the “Downing clone” Richie Faulkner. He created the bulk of the phrases the new songs are built on, played most of the additional guitars and ornaments, and delivered the lion’s share of the solos. Let’s linger on those middle-eights for a moment. Judas Priest have always been famous for masterful atmosphere shifts, precisely thanks to their exceptional compositional ingenuity when it comes to keeping songs compact. Middle-eights usually consist of a succession of several modulations, riddled with multi-part solos, rhythm changes and a completely different vocal melody that Halford takes up. And Judas Priest pull off these tricks damn cohesively the whole way through. The red thread never runs dry. The album’s dynamics are superb! Dialed up to the max. With his contribution on the new album, Faulkner has confirmed once more what a brilliant composer, arranger, and especially soloist he has grown into! Richie’s zeal and commitment is in a way the driving engine, the catalyst that’s the reason the band has recorded and released three new studio albums since he joined.
“Invincible Shield” is an excellent follow-up to “Firepower”. Direction-wise there are no major departures between the two albums, but the general excitement among the metal public when “Firepower” came out was definitely bigger, since “Firepower” was a strong step up from its predecessor “Redeemer of Souls” (2014), whereas “Invincible Shield” no longer surprises in that respect! What matters is that it fulfills the wishes of the band’s fervent followers, who will welcome this album with open arms too and cherish it.
“Invincible Shield” is an album you can listen to anytime. Hardly anyone in metal addresses you with their musical vision more directly than Judas Priest! That’s why the album hits so immediately, so directly, so head-on! Honed to a “Priest-ly” edge, and only “Priest-ly”. An album that entertains and engages enormously! And gratefully fills every last corner of the soul of every fan of the band with its own special vibe! Unbelievable, and I never thought I’d write this, but it seems that even after 55 years of the band’s existence, this is not yet its final epitaph! “Invincible Shield” is a new album that has rejuvenated the legendary band for another dozen years, and an achievement that only the greatest know how to deliver. The one and only! The biblical elders of metal! May it stay that way forever!
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Track list:
1. Panic Attack
2. The Serpent And The King
3. Invincible Shield
4. Devil In Disguise
5. Gates Of Hell
6. Crown Of Horns
7. As God Is My Witness
8. Trial By Fire
9. Escape From Reality
10. Sons Of Thunder
11. Giants In The Sky
Line-up:
Rob Halford – vocals
Glenn Tipton – guitar
Richie Faulkner – guitar
Ian Hill – bass
Scott Travis – drums
