Sweetwater has launched a series of Gearfest 2020 interviews, conducted from quarantine due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In the clip below, Nick Bowcott chats with Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner.

On songwriting for the follow-up to Firepower

Faulkner: "We did some writing in February before all this here (COVID-19 pandemic), during the time when it was all coming to the surface. Me and Rob (Halford) made it back to the States just before the lockdown came into effect. We did get about a month's worth of writing done, a bunch of somgs, but they are by no means finished. When you start writing songs they become more fleshed out, and all of a sudden you've got a start and a middle and an end; it's a skeleton, so we need some meat and potatoes and muscles to put on it. Mid-sections, harmonies, guitar solos... so things are bare bones but we've got a much of them together and waiting for the time we can get back together again and start playing and recording them together. On the Firepower record we played them (the songs) live before we recorded them, s we want to get back together and flesh these songs out. When you get Scott Travis in the room, he's such a  musical drummer that he does things spontaneously that change the song for the better. Getting together with him in a room and playing together is just monumental in the creation of a Priest record."

The new Gibson TV Original Series, Riff Lords, gives viewers the chance to learn the riffs of their favourite songs directly from the guitarist who plays them. In Episode 1 of Riff Lords, Richie Faulkner breaks down the riffs of iconic Judas Priest songs including "Electric Eye", “Painkiller”, “Hell Bent for Leather” and many more.