Former JUDAS PRIEST guitarist K.K. Downing has posted the following message at his Steel Mill website:

"I hope that you have had a great summer season and that you all had lashings of metal from your favourite bands. I am just on my way to a HOSTILE-gig in Birmingham to get a good metal pounding myself.

It's great news that the band has now procured a release for their debut album Eve Of Destruction. It seems forever since a band from the Birmingham-area last made an impression on the metal world. I am anticipating that this young band will raise the flag for Midlands metal and join the ranks of their predecessors. With Ian's (Hill; Judas Priest bassist) son Alex in the band now how befitting that would be.

On that note I must urge everyone to try pay for their music because without your support our beloved metal will become an endangered species if it is not that way already.

I have many friends and associates that once had a good career and prospects; these include producers, record engineers, managers and of course many musicians. Now most of them are struggling to make ends meet and stay in the business. Unfortunately it is now virtually impossible for new bands to make any headway at all.

I know that many bands are making pretty decent records in their bedrooms or garages, but just think what we are missing - even as good as we thought we were back in the day we would never have made the records we did without the professional s that helped us to achieve our goals. It is essential to get things back on track, in order that the young musicians can afford the help of good experienced engineers and producers. But that will never happen until record labels start signing again and give the financial support that is much needed for this to happen. To get this on track, all of us need to endeavour to pay for our music if we can in order to secure the future of metal which we all hold dear to our hearts.

Just imagine if downloading was available in the sixties or seventies? I guarantee that the great metal legacy that we know today would not exist or at least not as we know it.

If there is one thing that I would like to take with me to my grave, it would be to know that all of the young and new talented players out there would at least have the fair chance to make it in the way that I did.

Many thanks again for your continued support."