JUDAS PRIEST's Ian Hill spoke with Jonathan Churchill from MetalTalk.net recently about a number of topics including American Idol, producing the band's next studio album, and the music industry today. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

MetalTalk.net: Moving onto the new album, you have already publicly stated that it's due next year and will be classic Priest. Who will produce the album?

Ian Hill: "It's still at a very early stage but it will probably be mainly the band. Glenn will do a lot of the work. We produced Nostradamus ourselves with the help of a great engineer in Attie (Attie Bauw)."

MetalTalk.net: In light of ACCEPT and MEGADETH's work with Andy Sneap and Rick Rubin's work with SLAYER and SLIPKNOT, would you consider an outside 'super producer'?

Ian Hill: "We like to work on production ourselves, as we don't want too much outside influence. I remember in the '80s, Stock, Aitken And Waterman approached us to do some tracks and it just didn't work."

MetalTalk.net: Did you actually write any songs with them or create any demos?

Ian Hill: "We may have laid out a couple of very rough ideas but it would have changed the character of the band too much if we'd gone down that route. We've had a long, successful career doing things our own way and so that's how we'll continue!"

MetalTalk.net: You did have outside influence on the Defenders Of The Faith and Screaming For Vengeance albums, via songwriter Bob Halligan Jr. Why was that?

Ian Hill: "We'd already done a couple of non-Priest tracks in 'Diamonds And Rust' and 'The Green Manalishi', which had worked well. It's really something the record company pushed us to do, to get a commercial track on the radio. It's funny because by the time we'd finish with the track it's too heavy to release and we ended up going with one of our own! Bob Halligan's a good songwriter but our versions were just too Heavy Metal to release!"

Read the entire interview here.