Rob Halford’s Blues Project Has Enough Material for Debut Album

Judas Priest’s Rob Halford is the self-certified Metal God, but even he can’t be all-metal all the time and has been working with friends and family on what will be his debut blues album. He’s now confirmed there’s enough material written for a full record… and it’s all saved to his phone.

The album, which will harken back to the era that pre-dated and influenced early rock ‘n’ roll and eventually heavy metal, hasn’t been completely finished yet, but Halford is feeling confident about its eventual release, which will have to come at an optimal time as Judas Priest’s tour and followup to 2018’s Firepower remain priorities.

“I love the blues. Everything comes from the blues. Rock ‘n’ roll — it all starts with the blues. And what a great style of music that is,” Halford said of the genre in a recent interview with Kyle Meredith (transcription via Blabbermouth).

“I’ve been working on — well, I say I, my brother, Nigel, and my nephew Alex, Ian Hill’s son, on bass, and our friend [Jon] Blakey on guitar, those guys have been putting together the foundations for quite a while now,” he went on and noted, “We have enough material to make a record. I’ve just got to find the words and put the voice on it at some point.”

While Halford’s voice will certainly be a defining characteristic, he didn’t want to be too heavy-handed on influencing the direction of the music.

“The only thing that I threw at the guys was, ‘Do what you feel you want to do in terms of ideas.’ I did give ’em a list of some of my favorite blues styles and blues performers as a little bit of a template for the guys to bounce off of.”

“It’s all in [my] phone — I’ve got the album in this phone — and it’s great. It’s gonna be a special moment, ’cause I’ve always wanted to make a blues record,” he continued.

Now, if you’re reading this, Metal God, please take our advice here and make sure that phone is backed up. Or just make sure those files are saved somewhere else in general. You don’t want to wind up like Kirk Hammett, who lost his phone full of riff ideas before Metallica released Hardwired… To Self-Destruct. Since he didn’t have his phone backed up, he lost all those precious recordings.

Halford stressed his debut blues record would arrive “when time allows,” citing Judas Priest’s 50th anniversary tour (which had been postponed due to the pandemic) as well as new Priest music as the two things that must come first.

Perhaps this blues album will feature the “duet” with Behemoth’s Nergal that Halford had teased in the fall of last year. After all, Nergal’s side project Me and That Man plays a dust-caked blues style of music.

In the meantime, there is “very potent” new music from Judas Priest on the horizon.

Rob Halford Interview With Kyle Meredith