 Alive on the metal voice today. Good news. Today is another new release day. Actually, it's actually tomorrow, but it's today in a lot of places of the world. Judas Priest has released or is going to release, depending on where you live, a new single called Crown of Horns, which I keep mistaken as Crown of Thorns. It sounds like it, doesn't it? Why would anyone make that mistake? We've all heard of Crown of Thorns. Taken from their Invincible Shield album that's going to be released on March the 8th, 2024 in Epic Records. This is their 19th album. Wow, that's a lot of music on the show today, Loran. I'm not sure if it's just Laura or I, Loran. Laura, I don't know what my middle name's in there, but Laura. All right, we figured we'd shake things up a little bit. Of course, Perrin Wilson all the way, you know, about 30 minutes away from me north. Good evening, everybody. I'm straight out of my, like, I realized I was wearing my work clothes and I'm like, shit, I really probably shouldn't be doing the metal voice and my dress best. So, like, I quickly put on a Judas Priest vintage T-shirt. I'm wearing my work clothes. I still have a scarf on. I had to go to an office today. I had to go back to the office. So, I was all dressed up more so than I normally do for a metal voice show. All right, so again, this is the third single by Judas Priest. We've spoken about Panic Attack. We reviewed that song. We reviewed Trial by Fire. And now Crown of Horns or Thorns depends how you spell it, right? I'm gonna start off with this, okay? I'll let you guys, you could interject as I'm talking here. I'll map out the structure of the arrangement of the song. You could interject if you like and at the end, we could all kind of give our overall review on the track, okay, we'll go around the room. It starts off with a guitar solo, kind of like the sentinel, right? You think a sentinel is just a guitar solo all by itself. It goes into a more of a mid-paced type of song with guitar harmonies. It goes into a nice melodic verse. And you think, wait a second, is this turbo meets, I don't know, turbo? It's got that clean guitar sound, that chorus sound. It goes into this big chorus. Maybe a three-part harmony chorus, very melodic, catchy, back into the verse, back into the chorus. And then it goes into this sort of like doom guitar that I've never really heard priests go into, maybe a little black Sabbath nod there. Then it goes to this guitar solo, reminds me of Night Ranger Eddie Van Halen, singing bridge with another three-part harmonies. I believe the chorus and then it fades out with the chorus and a guitar solo. So that's kind of like the map and the blueprint of the song. So I'll start with Laura. Laura, just tell me about what you thought of everything I just said, or just the song in general. Well, let's go piece by piece, right? Let's go kind of intro verse. You want to do that? Okay, okay, let's go with the intro, the guitar solo. Okay, what did you think? You know, it sounded good. As the guitar solo started to go into the song, my first feeling was, and I don't know why I thought this, but it just came to my top gun. I have no idea, but like an anthem, like kind of an anthony kind of song. So I kind of mapped out the song a bit like you did and I kind of put little stars next to the parts of the song I liked and I didn't put stars next to the parts of the song I didn't like. So spoilers are parts of the song I don't like, but I did like the intro. So I felt like Richie was kind of channeling his inner Eddie Van Halen and no, I'm not saying Richie is doing his take on eruption the way Quiet Riot was a battle axe or whatever, but I definitely, when I heard that solo by the second time I heard it, I've listened to the song three times. I'm like, is Richie doing a little Eddie Van Halen there? And I kind of felt like he was trying to do some kind of Van Halen-ish kind of intro. And then one thing I really liked about the intro was after the solo, Scott Travis comes in with a kind of pretty interesting dynamic kind of build like a drum beat to kind of build the drama for the song. So I liked the solo going into kind of the drum bit before the song actually started. So I thought the intro of the song was definitely something that catches your attention. It does. And Laura, like it is a very top gun feel. I feel like I'm getting in a fighter jet or something or I'm preparing to get in my fight. Yeah, like an anthem, like there's something about to happen. Yeah. They want to get on a soundtrack. We're looking to get on a soundtrack. All right, so now you're going into the verse. Rob singing the verse is very catchy. It's melodic. What did you guys think? You know. He's not screaming. He's not screaming like the painkiller, right? Absolutely not. Is it the parter from that? Yeah. Yeah, it's definitely it's a parter. Definitely more mellowed out, watered down a little bit. I almost got like an elegant weapons feel to it. OK, all right. Just that, you know, that steady singing. That's, you know, I'll be honest. And I've been on record that I love panic attack and I loved my God, I'm blanking on the second, the name of the second song by fire. I didn't like this verse. So I love the intro. And, you know, when you when you posted that snippet of the chorus the other day, I really like the chorus. And we'll get to that in a second. But when I heard this verse, I was kind of like, hmm, like I'm a little let down by that. Like, I feel like Rob singing a bit. What? I guess not really. Yeah, OK, well, really. Are you kidding me? Laura and I have agreed in the past, disagreed about things in the past. So here, I don't know, I don't know. Do you agree on that? I'm hearing Top Gun here, but I think I like that. I didn't love the verse didn't blow me away. I have the three songs I heard. I was a little OK, I'll listen more, but this isn't really making me go, oh, my God, this is going to be amazing. You know, it kept me wanting a little bit more. So did you like it? I think can I say that? Did you like the verse? Did you like the melody? Did it capture capture? Did it hold your attention? It was good, not great. You know, I listened a little bit more. You know, I had my buds on, like I said, I just listened to it before it came on. But well, I'll tell you, it didn't get any better for me. Like I said, I listened to it first time. I'm like, OK, again, there's parts of the songs I like. You know, you know, Perrin, you know, I don't think I could not disagree with you more. I mean, I was going, wow, man, he is, you know what? It's one thing to sing in that sort of high falsetto painkiller vocals, right? That screaming and everybody's so impressed. But when you keep doing it, people say, oh, another painkiller. People, but now he's actually singing a song. You know, he's showing that not only can he do this, but he can do that as well. And to me, it doesn't sound like Richie Wagner in our interview. We said this, OK? I would say it's a bit more progressive in places. And it's got a bit of that killing machine swagger. Look, I like killing machine or hell, Ben, for leather was produced today, maybe that. But I see that swagger there. Look, this will clearly be a varied album because already on the three tracks we've heard, we've kind of heard different sides of Judas Priest. And I like the fact it's going to be a varied album. But when you deliver a varied album, there's invariably going to be parts of it that you love, parts of it that you kind of like, and parts of it that you're just kind of OK on. So when it came to the that verse, yes, he's not doing the typical Judas Priest, Rob Halford, screaming thing. Yeah. But I did, I guess that the verse didn't blow me away. And I think my expectation was really high because of the snippet we had heard the other day, which wasn't of the verse. Wow. But ask me how I like the chorus, because the chorus. No, no, no, I'm sticking to the verse right now. To me, I thought I was blown away by the verse. I thought here's here's Rob at his best. It's catchy, it's hooky, it's accessible, and it's out of the box. It doesn't sound like something they've done before. I can't even I can't even think of a song that sounds like that. But I would say there's a touch of turbo there. Any lost comments there, Laura, on the verse? No, no, I just I just, like I said, from the beginning, I was expecting like something a little bit more to come out of Rob's voice. Not necessarily a scream, but just something else. And, you know, I kept listening because I wanted to see if there was more coming. All right, all right, now here's your here's your segue, Perrin, into the chorus. Yeah, so we heard the snippet of the chorus the other day and that really got me. I think that's what really built my expectation of the song, because again, anyone who doesn't know me, I have pretty varied metal tastes, like from Bon Jovi slippery one wet to venom, you know, I like it all. But I love a good hooky melodic chorus chorus. And this is this is as melodic and hooky as Judas Priest gets. So for me, the chorus is one for the ages. It's it grabs you right away. It's catchy as hell. And, you know, I on the thread the other day, Laura, and I think Laura, you jokingly kind of likened it to Winger. And I won't liken it to Winger, but you know what I will liken it to? Rob, in interviews recently in the last year, has been very complimentary of a very controversial band that is known for very poppy hooky choruses. Yeah, who might, who am I talking about? Ghost. Rob has been very complimentary of Tobias. And when I hear this chorus, I say to myself, hmm, are all those compliments that Rob has been giving to Tobias and Ghost in interviews over the last year? Is it coming back to us now? And is he being kind of inspired by that? Because for me, the poppy hookiness of this chorus isn't necessarily 80s hair metal, although it's a little bit there. It's kind of the sensibility that Ghost has been really catching. That's a very good point. Actually, Perna, it's a very astute of you say that. Do I win something? Do I win or? You win a pot on the back next time I see. But my my thing is, if you're going to make an album that that's going to have all this diversity in it with with the tunes, it almost like if you're listening to the whole album in its entirety, you have your head set on and it's kind of like a little bit of this, a little bit of that. It kind of knocks me off because I like it to be kind of like. This is one of the same sound, right? But I'm saying for me, when I listen to something, when I put something on, if you you're saying that it's it's going to be, you know, highs and lows and heavy and low, you know, we don't know what the rest of the tracks are, but so far, it's just kind of a mix. Mixed back a little bit. Let's just get to this. Did you like the chorus? Yeah. Did you did you enjoy the thing? It was hooky and I like the chorus. It was like, you know, top gun. I'm still getting. Yeah, I was waiting for the metal to come through a little bit and it didn't. OK, wasn't, you know, the heaviness could have maybe jumped up a little bit of notch. I don't know. Personally, for myself, I thought this was like another knockout chorus, three part harmonies. Hooky catching. You can actually catch yourself singing the melody, right? Which is this could have been done in the 80s, you know, and you could have heard it on the radio and said, you know, that deserves to be on the radio, right? That's how catchy melodic is in mainstream. Yeah, and mainstream. And I can see, I can see Per and I, you're saying that ghost. It's interesting because ghost is actually retro to the 80s, right? In a sense, the pop sensibility part of it. I always joke that ghost is like kiss meets Alice Cooper meets Abba meets, you know, Bon Jovi meets Republic of Black Album. It's like this bastard child of all these things. But I underline the Abba and the Bon Jovi's because I mean, what's the knock on ghost? The people who don't like ghost get mad that they're called metal, but they have this pop sensibility. And if it's one thing to bias knows how to do, like if you look at Mary on a Cross and Square Hammer and their biggest hits, there's this really hooky melodic poppy chorus built into kind of a metal ish kind of song. So I just wonder if like there was a little inspiration drawn from Rob there because it was there was. Yeah, guys, I want to ask you this. Would you like, is this not metal enough? Do you think this is not metal enough to song? I don't think it is. Have they getting you again? Do you think they're out of the box here? This is some territory that they have not gone into yet. I feel like there's a lot of dream theater inspiration so far, especially in. Yeah, I'm getting dream theater vibes, especially like, you know, Derek Chirinian. Yeah, if you listen, because I, you know, I listen to a lot of old dream theater and I if you listen to it, go back, do the homework. Yeah, well, the start of the start of Panic Attack, I completely agree with you. Like where you have the rototoms to start a panic attack and then that I definitely hear dream theater there. But I mean, look, yeah, I've been on record that some recent releases I haven't liked because they're too much of the same thing. In case of race to me. So I well, there's other records, too, that I just don't like when it's too. Like throw me throw me there on their own path. Throw me a curveball here and there. So I like. Right, right now. Well, if Priest gives us an album with 10, well, 14 bonus trucks in Japan, 14 completely songs different from one another, then I'm going to be okay guys. This is kind of like a real weird mix of 14 different songs. But I'm sure as we hear the rest of the album kind of theme is going to emerge and they'll be kind of like four songs that are kind of like melodic and four songs that are heavier and four that are kind of mid tempo. So I'm sure once we see the bigger picture, it won't be that all over the place. But so far with the three singles, I kind of like that we've seen three different sides to Judas Priest and the Jimmy to answer your question about how we've been down this road before. Okay. Turbo is the obvious answer, but Priest always had, especially in the 80s. One of my favorite songs from Judas Priest is desert planes. There is definitely like a poppy cadence and sensibility to desert planes. I'm wearing a screaming for vengeance shirt. You know, take these chains, right? That they're take these chains girl. You know, they're, they take them off of my heart. There's a pop sensibility there. So this isn't no question. No, no, no, I would say this is uncharted territory in terms of the sound, the overall sound of the song. Like you, like I could not take this sound and transport it onto any of their albums in the past. Oh yeah. Firepower, the closest, but I could not. I would say somewhere between killing machine, firepower and turbo. But I got to say a guy who does not, I'm not, I don't like sneak sound maybe because I've heard it too much that he's really doing a good job on a last accent album and this, this album as well. So I'm pretty impressed with the first three songs. I like diversity. I like something different. I like them changing it up. I mean, ACDC, their biggest flaw is they keep doing the same thing over and over again, right? But that's what we want. I don't know about Priest. I don't know about Priest. All right. So it's always done something different. I'm sorry to interrupt. They've always done something different. Like all of their albums, one to the next to the next always was a surprise. Yeah. All right. So we go back to the verse. We go back to the chorus. And then if you guys remember, there's this doom guitar bit, like a down tuned doom guitar. There's no solo. It's just the guitar playing those, those power chords. Those breaks, right? They were like, did you hear breaks in it? A little bit. Dan, Dan. It's just like this kind of little bit of pause, like not necessarily break, but a pause. And I was like, what is this? I had never heard it before. So that that was a little bit different. Yeah, it threw me for a loop. It definitely like, again, look, if part of the job here is to engage the listener and make them listen closely and surprise them a little bit. This is something I've never heard in a Judas Priest song. Like a, you know, a solo done this way. I kind of wrote kind of grungy dirties, how I described it. You know, and it's, it's not quite like Seattle Soundgarden, Alice and Chains Grunge, but I heard a little, a little Jerry Cantrell. A little Cantrell, yeah. You know, like so I, I kind of, that little rip. Yeah. Yeah, so it's, it's, it's different. And I'm, I'm, you know, I'm not sure how I feel about it yet. Like I'm not sure how it fits into this melodic song. I think the whole song fits, except for that guitar solo. It's kind of like the Sentinel in the way. It just, it just comes out of nowhere. It's more like the, the choir ride. What was it called? Battle, battle, battleaxe. It's more of battleaxe than eruption in terms of its shorter. But I did the chorus to me and that it has a nice segue into that doom power chords there, those, those doom riffs. And then it goes to another bridge where Rob is singing in another three part harmony or maybe even four. The bridge was good. I didn't like the verses, but I have to say, like I liked that bridge between the grungy guitar part going into the main solo, which I guess we'll talk about in a second. But yeah, I thought the bridge was good. But again, so the, yeah, that grungy thing kind of threw me for a loop. And we, I will say this, that's a good thing. There's been talk that Richie is now the driving force of Judas Priest, the creative force of Judas Priest. You listen to this song and there's like Richie all over it. Cause I mean, it's been said where the dueling, you know, lead guitars that Judas Priest is known for, you know, and we, we didn't, this is, this is the Richie show. This is Richie's eruption like intro, Richie's grungy, like, I don't know if I'll call it a solo, but bit. And then I guess we'll get Richie's letting loose. That's what it's all about. He's letting loose and the creative juices are flowing, you know, the injection is coming all out. Yeah. I mean, I guess if there's Richie Priest, go ahead. I don't know. This is a question in my mind about that, how much of the creative process he's involved in. All right. I, there's a question. I don't know if they're telling him what to play or if he's coming up with it. But all I know is like, yeah, he's given a lot of place on this song. He's given him a lot of place. I'm not, I'm not taking anything away from him at all. But I'm just saying I, I question because of the history. Look, it's, it's every time there's a, there's a legacy band will call it and they get a new member. There's always this injection of new creative juices that are flowing, right? So I could see Richie, he was on the, he's on, been on three albums now. And the first album, he's probably standing back a little bit, right? He doesn't know his place. Then on firepower, he's getting comfortable. And now he's really letting go. So I kind of agree with Perron on this. This is the Richie, I wouldn't say it's a Richie show. Rob's doing a great job. And so is the rest of that. But I'm just saying that Richie's more involved from hearing the song. It seems that way. Yeah, he is because in the beginning, I did say I did feel a little elegant weapon to it. That's right. Right. I agree. Richie's vehicle, right? You know? Yeah. All right. So here comes the guitar solo. I don't know if those are hammer-ons. I don't know what's going on, but I, I'm listening. I'm hearing Night Ranger. I'm hearing Eddie Van Halen. I'm hearing 80s flashy guitars. What'd you guys think about the guitar solo? Or two, actually, there was two. There was a trade-off. Yeah, again, flat, not really anything above what I've heard from them in the past. You know, again, I listened to it once, so maybe you have to listen to it again. But my first impression of it was it's a guitar solo. Nothing, you know, that, that really took it like to the next level, in my opinion. All right. All right. So, so my note is more traditional solo. It rips exclamation point. Oh, that's an exclamation point. Wow. I put an exclamation point on my notes. I can go as fast as I want. So I, I, I just put it in no cap. So I don't know what that means. So like I said to you, I put, I, I broke down the song into parts and I put stars next to my favorite parts. So my three favorite parts of the song were the intro, the chorus, and this solo. I, I, I love the solo. I, and maybe, yeah, maybe it's not the most groundbreaking. Oh, actually, I love it too, apparently. We're in agreement here, you know, and to me, I'm going, he's doing, he's, he's doing a lot of those, he's playing a lot of very Eddie Van Hill and ish or maybe elegant weapon ish, but there is a lot. There's a nod there, man, to that flashy guitar of the 80s. But if you closed your eyes, is there a distinct sound? Like, I know that this is Richie Faulkner, Glenn Tipton, whoever's on it, do you know that? I'll be honest with you. Yeah, if you closed your eyes and didn't know that it was a Judas Priest song, would you say Faulkner? But that's, that's, that's the beauty of it. I think as a, as a song, I know it's a Judas Priest song, but if I just took one part of it, I wouldn't know, but me, that's good. I mean, it's a good thing. It's good to be different. I'm a different kind of guy. But there's, there's very few guitar players that like, you know, you close your eyes. Like you said, you listen to them and you know it's them. No matter what guitar they even picked up, you know, Brian May, Ted Nugent, Leslie West, Richie Faulkner. We said that the last time. Yeah, there, there's certain people that just, yeah, it doesn't matter. Like you could just pick it off in two seconds. And there are some tandems and, and, and Tipton and Downing were a tandem too, that you kind of know what's doing. So, look, I guess I call it a traditional solo. And yes, it's a little non-descript. But yeah, and I'm on a guitar player and I won't get into the technical side of it. But in terms of just being pleasing to the ear, no matter who's playing it. That's right. I thought it was what you got to look to at the end of the day. I thought I was really pleasing to the ear solo. Like I said, it was. And I'll tell you, I'll say something to your point when there's one guitarist in the band, it's easier to identify a tone. And the producer try to capture that. So does a guitarist. When there's two guitars in a band, you don't want two separate tones. You want to sort of a melting of tones because you want the song to be cohesive in a sense, right? So you got to be careful not to have too distinct like Adrian Smith and Dave Murray. Can you really tell sometimes who's doing the solo? You'd really have to like listen carefully or watch them on a video to understand. But because they have to work together, right? And they have to have a song, a guitar part, two guitar parts that have to sound like one guitar part in a sense. So I liked it. Those two solos actually, there's one. And then and then the second one starts right after I don't know if Glen's doing it. I don't know if Richard's doing both of them. These things we do not know at this time. So thumbs up for me for the guitar solo. You're like around there, Laura and and pairing. Yeah, I'm around. All right, all right. One of my favorite parts of the song. Yeah. All right. So then we go back. Then it goes back to, of course, either the verse and the chorus and it fades. And there's a fade guitar solo at the end. Right. All right. So let's just let's just. I mean, it's one song here. We can't spend all night with one song. But let's go around. Did you like it, Laura? Did you like it at the end of the day? I think it was a good kickoff. Like I said, gave me, you know, the top gun feeling to it. I was expecting metal. I was expecting a little bit more, you know, voice from Halford. I love the dueling guitars. I love, you know, the back and forth didn't hear that on there. It was a little flat for me. But, you know, all in all, good. You know, a good listen for a first listen for me. Oh, geez. OK. All right. It's fair enough. Burn. So again, referring to my notes, a good song saved by a great chorus. So of the three songs they've released, it's probably my favorite chorus of the three songs. But overall, it's my least favorite of the three songs. I was I was a little let down. Because after we heard that snippet and I love this, the chorus is what was in the snippet. I was like, oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, this is going to be good. So my bar was really, really high. And then I heard the intro, like I said, excellent. And just, you know, that first verse kind of let me down. And then the chorus brought me back up. And the verse brought me back down. And the solos brought me back up. So good song, not bad at all. Good song. I gave it a seven on ten, but I gave the others a higher mark. Boy, wow. So good song saved by a great chorus. Just the chorus is the saving grace of the song to me. I think it's a perfect song. About a seven, yeah. I would put, I would go more higher. I'd go like a nine out of ten on this song. I, you know, it's harder to judge songs in a ten out of ten or ten scale. But I would definitely, I don't know what I'd make, what can make this song better. I can't think of it. So it'd have to go like nine out of ten, ten out of ten around there. Because I could not think of, to me, I love the verse. I love the chorus. I love the solo. Maybe it didn't really need the solo at the beginning. Yeah, maybe, but it's, you know, maybe a seven and a half. But look, out of the three songs, I'm saying this is my lowest grade. And it's a seven. So we're worth, if we're three singles into an album, and I'm thinking the three singles to me are like a nine and eight and a seven or an eight and eight and a seven, we're looking at it. Probably what's going to be a pretty good album. I mean, I mean, there's still a lot more tracks. But I mean, this is still, if seven is the lowest I'm going on anything. That's, it's a pretty good place to be. Well, it's even, I have even a better place. I'm at a nine. So I, you know, to me, I cannot see anything wrong with the song. I can't see anything wrong with any part of the song. OK, Scott Travis is keeping the beat. It's OK. Sometimes you just got to keep the beat. You don't always have to drive, you know, drive. I don't know how much I hear the bass, but, you know, bass is never really that high in the mix. The bass has a nice tone. You know, we should say this, you know, there's a nice, there's a very a trebly tone. He's got a nice. Lottery. It's like a little, yeah. I only listen to it on my phone, I'll be honest. Like I haven't listened to it on a good sound system yet. So there's that as well. But, you know, if we get off the song for a second, how weird is it that here we are in 2024? We're three singles in to an album that's not being released for another almost two months. It's just so strange. I know it's just, but it's just so I've been saying that all along. I I don't know the reason behind it. Maybe that's a question for Rob Halford, why he but it's not just necessary. A lot of bands are doing this now. And it's just so. Yeah, this is the furthest I've seen, though. Yeah, there is. Guys, this is this is about, you know, it's all about pre-sale. That's all I'm going to say. It's all about pre-sale. You can't get the sales after the album's released because it's leaked and it's everywhere. So if you can get the album sales on the pre-sale, you know, that's where you can make some money. Yeah, I'm just showing my age because I remember single number three usually came out like six months after the album was out. You know, you'd have your first video. You know, it was the reverse. It was the reverse. Yeah, the first video came out maybe a week before the album came out. Then single number two was maybe, you know, six weeks, two months into the album. I'll give you a graph of how it used to be. OK, you release a single before the album. It stimulated the sales. And then when the sales got soft, when the album's released, you like the graph, like the chart. So now the album's dying off, right? In the second and third week, you release another music video and boosted the sales. And sometimes that's because you couldn't download it, right? Powered out. And then this would go down again. And what they do, they release another video and boost the sales. Today, you could release this many videos and this is what happens, right? It's just they release videos for tours. But now what happens is this here, the album release date is here. You like my graph still? You got to do pre-sale, pre-sale, pre-sale, get those album sales, release date, album sales, right? That's what happens. Brave New World, but it just still strikes me as a little bit odd. And look, good for us. It gives us stuff to talk about. And exactly. And talk about graphs that don't exist. And I can't wait for the album. I'm really, I will say that boosts it. It can send Saxon coming out tomorrow. There are some albums that I'm really looking forward to this year. And this is really one of my most highly anticipated albums of the year. So they've definitely wet my appetite. But it's like, really, we're three singles in and I still have to wait two more months, just a little off, you know? Guys, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, everybody, for watching. And you know what? Go pre-order on that note, the new Invincible Shield by Judas Priest. It's going to be released on March the 8th, 2024, of course, on Epic Records. This will be their 19th studio album. See you all soon. Our ears will be listening. Thank you, everybody. Get the new Saxon tomorrow. It is reverse support.