Last year’s Judas Priest album, Redeemer of Souls, was arguably the best Priest album since 1990’s Painkiller. And even though the band suggested that 2011’s Epitaph World Tour would be their last, they followed up that album with a tour that went on for the last year or so, playing to near-capacity or capacity crowds. With the success of the album and tour, it’d make sense that they might want to make a follow-up to the album, and according to an interview new guitarist Richie Faulkner gave to Reverb, they’ll be doing that next year:

We’re looking at maybe next year going into the studio again and putting down some ideas and seeing what we’ll come up with. The first tour I did was the Epitaph tour, and you can see why these guys have been doing it for 40 years. They love what they do, and it’s inspiring.

When you go around the world and play in front of all these passionate fans in different counties, it inspires you to go and create new songs, and when you create news songs, it inspires you to go back out on the road again and play those new songs live. Now that we’re on the road playing Redeemer of Soulsand these new songs live, it’s again inspiring us to go back into the studio and do some more. A lot of people say to these guys, “What’s the secret of doing this music for 40 years?” You can see why this happens: because it inspires us.

It might not be until 2017 that Priest’s eighteenth album is released, given that it took them six albums to record the follow-up to Nostradamus. That being said, having seen Priest earlier this month, they’re still an incredible live band, and while they might not be at the level of their ’80s heyday, they’re still up there, and Rob Halford’s voice is as good as it’s ever been.

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