Phoenix phreak Eric Braverman has tapped into a cool way to make these metal interviews interesting, this time, weaving a sit-down chat with a fairly humourless Priest with a storyline that finds him homeless and in need of work, and thus babysitting a friend’s tyke so headbanger and his wife can go to the big show. Couple that with Eric’s, ahem, “brave” questions and a party is had. And the best part is something you might miss if you aren’t paying attention, and that is watching Eric’s face (and neck!) go all rubbery and suppressing laughs as he listens to answers, especially from Rob. I mean, I can picture Glenn and K.K. off camera wondering “What the…?!” Cut to plot, and there Eric goes, giving the baby a shot of Canadian Club (“Take control of that”), getting him to pick the CD – baby picks Painkiller after which a plainly pleased Eric goes, “I totally get it.” See, he’s a little irked he’s got to miss the show, so the booze for both is allowed to flow freely. Elsewhere, look for a couple classic lines like when he thanks Glenn for bringing up an “old famous London soccer guy they could look up on Google” and “You never wrote a song, ‘The Librarian’” and when Halford had plainly had enough, Braverman saying, “Thank you, cowboy.” Eric also warms up the room by telling Priest they are “one of my top six bands of any kind of music” and then later, getting them to sign his Last Supper shopping bag after grilling them on the finer biographical points concerning Judas. Divide and conquer… Eric also asks Rob who he’d replace K.K. and Glenn with as guitarists and then later, if K.K. and Rob were hit by a train, what Glenn would put on their headstones. Professionally shot, storyline revisited, the interview lives and breathes. But the success of it comes down mostly to Eric’s enthusiasm and good-natured ribbing of a band he clearly knows well. Do not shut down before the ending – things get nasty, and there’s going to be some explaining to do with mommy. View now at bravewords.com and man, his Deadly Ted Nugent episode is even better – those two together in a room… there’s bound to be some raised voices.