After 31 years at the frontier of heavy metal, Judas Priest have been through countless highs and lows. On the eve of their first ever visit to Australia and the release of new album ‘Demolition’, Hype caught up with Ian Hill (bass), a part of the band’s legendary full-frontal rhythm assault since 1969.

The nineties were a relatively quiet decade for the Priest musically, after the departure in controversial circumstances of legendary vocalist Rob Halford in 1992 and the general downturn in the classic metal scene. After their sonically brutal 1997 comeback effort ‘Jugulator’, the band needed a new approach. Four years later, the release of ‘Demolition’ sees the band expressing themselves in new ways, with near-ballads such as ‘Close To You’ nestled alongside more traditional extreme metal fare such as ‘Bloodsuckers’, ‘Metal Messiah’ and ‘Devil Digger’.

“It goes back to ‘Jugulator’,” Hill says. “When Rob left, the band didn’t do anything really. There were seven years between ‘Painkiller’ and ‘Jugulator’, and because of the steps forward we keep trying to make between every album, there were at least two albums missing in that period.

“We had to decide where we would be if those two albums had been there,’ he continues, eand with “Painkiller” being such a heavy, brutal album as it was, the logical step was to ‘Jugulator’, which was a very, very hard album. But if there was one thing missing on that album, it was the subtle passages and ballads which we’ve also been known for over the years, so we decided to rectify that with ‘Demolition’.”

Judas Priest were not the only metal band to have a hard time in the 1990s, as the whirlwind that was Nirvana washed the decks of the old guard, fundamentally altering the alternative musical landscape and killing off some of the more excessive excesses of the 1980s. Heavy metal, one the great 1980s icons, found the new landscape tough going.

“A lot of other bands didn’t do a great deal either,” Hill explains. “[Iron] Maiden went their separate ways, and all the standard classic bands all stopped playing for some reason. This left the door open for the new wave of metallers coming through, and I think metal’s better for it as well. These new bands have a lot to offer — if you take the make-up and the bullshit away, you’ve got a damn good heavy metal band underneath it all,” he laughs.

The story of Judas Priest in the last seven years has been the story of Ripper Owens, the man plucked from the obscurity of a Judas Priest etribute’ band to replace his hero, Rob Halford, as the frontman to carry the band into the next millennium. Owens only got the job when the band chanced upon a video of an Ohio man with a Judas Priest tattoo, and it blew them away.

“He was a great find when we found him,” Hill says. “When Rob left, it knocked the wind out of our sails. I don’t think there were any of us who didn’t think at some stage that it was about time to hang our hats up.

“When we found Ripper and discovered his capabilities, he gave everybody the drive and incentive to carry on. It was very much a fresh start for us.”

According to Hill, ‘Demolition’ reflects Ripper’s growing stature, as the band’s Halford-tinged history is finally consigned to the past.

“eJugulator’ was written for a vocalist, any vocalist, because we didn’t know who was going to end up singing on it,” he says. “But with ‘Demolition’, we knew his capabilities so we could write material accordingly. I think it shows, there’s a lot more confidence coming from Ripper.”

If Ripper’s story sounds familiar, you have probably been reading reviews of the Mark Wahlberg film ‘Rock Star’. While both sides have played down the Priest element to the film, the links are obvious to the neutral observer. Any similarity to any persons, living or deadOe

“It started out as a story about Ripper joining the band, from a New York Times piece,” Hill explains. “The production company bought the rights to the story, and next thing you know, all over the internet, it says these people are putting out the story of Judas Priest and Ripper joining them!

“Our management thought that if they were going to do a film about Priest, it might be a good idea for them to talk to us, and find out what the characters are like — if somebody’s portraying you on film, you want to have at least a little bit of control over it.

“They were contacted but they didn’t want to know,’ he continues. ‘They wanted total artistic freedom and all this business. So we said that if they were going to do that, they couldn’t use the name Judas Priest. The story’s basically the same, with somebody playing in a cover band who gets to play with their favourite rock stars that they’ve been following ever since adolescence. That’s as far as it goes, but any similarities end there.”

Thirty years on, Hill sees no end in sight for a rejuvenated Priest with Ripper at the helm, and only opportunity in the future.

“It gets to the point where you can’t imagine yourself doing anything else,” he says. “Some of the songs we play on the stage are 20-odd years old, but when you see the reaction to them, if we dropped any, we’d probably get lynched. It’s that reaction that gives us the incentive to carry on playing.”