Judas Priest’s “Invincible Shield”: Repaving the Metal Highway

When I first sat down to listen to Judas Priest’s Invincible Shield, I had to remind myself that it’s 2024. The anticipation equaled two other moments related to a JP record – when I bought Screaming for Vengeance in 1982 and Angel of Retribution in 2005 (which marked Rob Halford’s return to the fold). 2005 was almost 20 years ago, and since then, the band has released three strong albums, with 2018’s Firepower arguably being the strongest since 1990s Painkiller.  

That’s a lot of dates and album titles I tossed out there. Then again, the band has been around for over 50 years.

In a recent Forbes article, Rob Halford said of the new album, the band’s nineteenth, “Invincible Shield is in its own lane on the heavy metal highway.”

While the album doesn’t carve new roads (not even The Rolling Stones or the Beatles could do that with their recent offerings), Judas Priest joyfully repaves it with slags of molten metal. 

I don’t think Rob Halford would mind the use of the word “joy” in that last sentence when describing Invincible Shield. Halford himself refers to the song “As God Is My Witness” as “uplifting”.

Joy aside, Invincible Shield is a full-frontal assault that starts with the album’s first single, “Panic Attack”. It was first released in October 2023 to build anticipation, and I remember being amazed at the power of Halford’s vocals. He sings with the same clarity and confidence he delivered on “Screaming for Vengeance” 42 years ago (I had to do the math on that one as I was sure I was wrong – it doesn’t feel that long ago).

The lineup hasn’t changed much since the band’s first album, Rocka Rolla, in 1974—Halford, guitarist Glenn Tipton, and bassist Ian Hill are all present and accounted for. Richie Faulkner has been trading solos with Tipton since 2014’s Firepower, and drummer Scott Travis continues to drive the songs forward, as he’s been doing since 1990’s Painkiller. 

While the music on this album sounds modern and fresh, the most striking thing is a majority of the songs could be dropped on some of their classic albums from the 1980s. The anthemic title track and “Devil in Disguise” are good examples. “Sons of Thunder”, written by Tipton, is fist-pumping pleasure. Strip it off its modern production values, and it could easily have been on 1978’s Killing Machine.

There are some pleasantly unexpected moments. Halford’s verse delivery on “The Serpent and the King” reminded me of Nazareth’s Dan McCafferty (who sadly passed in 2022). “Escape from Reality” is Halford at his snarling best, with a bridge that would feel at home on an Ozzy record (I remember thinking something similar about “Electric Eye” in 1982). 

This isn’t to say the band is living in the past. “Giants in the Sky” and “Crown of Thorns” are destined to become Priest classics (check back with me in ten years to see if I’m right).  

And that’s the thing with this band – years mean nothing. They sound as fresh and ready to take on the world as they did right before Screaming for Vengeance thrust them onto the world stage, and even then they’d been at it for a decade.  

Where would I place this album if forced to rank every JP album? I can say it gets better with each listen, and I continue to discover little nuances in the vocals and the music I hadn’t noticed before. I’ll go out on a limb and put it in the top 5 – and with 19 studio albums to their credit as of 2024, that’s saying a lot. 

In the lyrics and music of Invincible Shield, good and evil are at war, and Judas Priest is the battle-scarred, winged warrior reporting from the front line.