JUDAS PRIEST - Celebrate A 50th Wedding Anniversary! Page 2
by Martin Popoff

Why the wait 'til November?

"Because we've literally got to put the finishing touches to it, at the end of this leg, prior to the Ozzfest. And then obviously we've got to give it to our producer to start the mixing process, and then we want some involvement in that along the way. And then when you give it to the record company, they preferably want six to eight weeks to turn it around. But it's good, because we're doing all these festivals and that throughout Europe to re-present ourselves, and we're doing 29 shows at the Ozzfest, throughout the states. Only one in Canada, I'm afraid (laughs), at the moment. But it will be great to get out there and reconsolidate our position, and obviously put a world tour together, which will be totally revamped, the whole thing, for a Priest spectacular in 2005."

K.K. is pretty tight-lipped about the new album, but offers the following. "The only thing I can say is that at the moment we're all convinced that we'll be able to keep our testicles next year and that the fans are not going to string us up; you know, 'Hang on, this isn't what we want.' Hopefully it's going to be pretty much exactly what everyone wanted from Priest. We think there's a lot of good stuff on there. It's pretty long; we've got a lot of material leftover, so we're going to do our best. But we're going to be playing it to a few people, just as a backup, saying, 'Hey, is this OK?' (laughs). You know what I mean? Maybe we'll drag some fans in off the street and say 'Hey, do you like this or not?' (laughs)."