“It’s absolutely pissing it down. If I go out, I’m gonna get fucking soaked.”
In Rob Halford’s hometown of Walsall, it is, indeed, pissing it down. It’s grey, it’s cold, it’s wet, the trains are up the creek, and he’s just spent the thick end of an hour wrestling with phone technology that refuses to work properly. Settling onto a leather sofa, the Judas Priest frontman gives an exaggerated ‘what can you do?’ shrug and raises a finger with the confidence of someone about to make a very good point.
“But that’s heavy metal, isn’t it?”
There’s a laugh, but this is how Rob Halford talks, constantly. Everything is heavy metal. Everything that's right and good and proper and filled with the vitality of life, anyway. And rain. And why not? Being The Metal God is, he says, as much a responsibility as it is a cool title – you can’t just dip in and out of it. You live it.
Today, as ever, he looks the embodiment of heavy metal: black shirt, shades indoors, bald head, big white Santa beard, septum piercing. But (again, as ever) it’s in his attitude and demeanour that you understand what he means by heavy metal, why he actually is The Metal God.
At 72, and half a century since Judas Priest’s Rock-A-Rolla debut album, Rob remains a man enlivened by life itself, talking enthusiastically and at pace about everything, from noting that his relationship with K! goes all the way back to our beginnings in 1981 (as both an artist and a reader), to discussing his health, to whatever new music he’s devouring, listing Svalbard, Malevolence and Sleep Token as just three current faves.
“I’m obsessed with Sleep Token,” he enthuses. “I think they’re really interesting. I’ve done my research online and found out who they all are and stuff – I’m a fiend for that. I need to get a selfie, The Metal God with Vessel.”
And when it comes to the reason we’re with him today, Priest’s 19th album, the irrepressibly metal Invincible Shield, on top of this enthusiasm, you can add a great deal of pride to the mix as well.
“I don’t want to put myself on a pedestal, but I normally come up with the titles,” he grins. “In the world of heavy metal, the band, the fans, the metal community, it's all about the Invincible Shield. It's defending the faith. We're still defending the faith, all these years later.”
Again, this is the sort of thing Rob says all the time, and it’s great, and he really means it. But Invincible Shield is also a work that truly reflects Judas Priest’s commitment to those values of never backing down, never being defeated, in a very real way.