Judas Priest are currently on the road with the latest leg of the Redemption Of Souls world tour with stops in Canada coming up, including this Saturday night in Regina, SK where all of heavy metal’s ghouls and goblins will rise from the grave! BraveWords caught up with the Metal God recently to chat about the tour, along with a number of topics bubbling in the cauldron including Halloween. Of course Judas Priest has a few metal morsels that you would add to any kind of horror-filled soundtrack. But is singer Rob Halford a fan of the season?

“Yes absolutely. In fact, we actually have a Halloween character that has raised his head on the Priest Instagram. His name is Spiv (yes, Spiv! See below courtesy of Judas Priest's Instagram). He’s from the east end of London and he will probably be making an appearance in Regina (at the Brandt Center) on Halloween night (October 31st). 

“All of us and Priest love the season. “The Ripper”, “Nightcrawler”, “Love Bites; they all have that kind of fun macabre type of horror-esque qualities to them. But keep the candy away from me, and please keep the candy away from Richie “The Falcon” Faulkner. That guy is like a walking sugar stick. I’ve never seen a guy drink so much coffee and candy in my life. He’s just hurdling along at one million miles an hour, which goes into his fingers when he gets on stage. Yeah, all those great movies like Freddy (Krueger) in Nightmare On Elm Street, the Halloween movies, Scream. It’s a fun time isn’t it. This is a really cool part of the year that we look forward to. We didn’t used to celebrate it that much in England when I was growing up as a kid. Now it’s become a very big event in the UK. I’m hoping that when we do the Halloween show here in Canada that we will have a cross-section of metal zombies and whatever else shows up in the pit can disembowel each other (laughs).”

Any particular type of music that you can recall that scared the living hell out of you growing up?

“To me Black Sabbath’s ‘Black Sabbath’ is the most evil track ever that’s been written in metal. And I had the opportunity to sing that track three times (Halford replaced Ronnie James Dio for two nights in November 1992 when Dio refused to open for Ozzy Osbourne. He also filled in for Ozzy at Ozzfest in Camden, New Jersey on August 26th, 2004, when the singer had bronchitis). It’s a very malevolent feeling when that song is played live. There’s this dark kind of thing that falls over the crowd and everybody shuts up, drops their cell phones and looks at the stage. It’s the most sinister of songs. When I had the opportunity to sing those first words - ‘what is this that stands before me’ - it’s like, ‘Oh my God, is that Satan in the front row?’ The most incredible heavy metal song that has that dark spirit.” As a kid, I remember the “Phantom Of The Opera” theme from that movie that they always used to put on TV. The main character (Lon Chaney) gives you an idea of what this time of the year means. Halloween means a lot of things to a lot of people, but overall it’s just a good time.”

Since you brought it up, I was in the crowd in New Jersey when you hopped up on stage to replace Ozzy Osbourne due to his illness that evening. 
Talk to me about the gargantuan task of stepping into Ozzy’s shoes. It wasn’t all cheery from the get-go if I recall.

“Well, it was an honour for me to take the mic that night. As you know, I just got off stage with Priest, had a quick shower. Change out of the black and put some more black on and then walk out and do that performance. I didn’t really have time to think about it. It was a bit of rock ’n’ roll history there. And there’s lots of snippets on YouTube out there floating about so you can check it out. It was also challenging for me as a singer, because everybody wanted to see Ozzy from where I was standing. So for the first few minutes, there was a little bit of a reaction going on towards me. I won’t tell you what hit me. There was a bit of frustration, but I think the fans understood. It was either we accept this, we run with this and understand it and have a good time with it or we don’t see Black Sabbath. So it was a win-win night for everybody.”

(Rob Halford live photo courtesy of Mark Gromen)