Elegant Weapons - the new band featuring Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner, alongside Rainbow singer Ronnie Romero, Uriah Heep bassist Dave Rimmer, and Accept drummer Christopher Williams - have released their debut full-length, Horns For A Halo (produced by Faulkner’s Priest bandmate, Andy Sneap and featuring album performances by Pantera’s Rex Brown and Judas Priest's Scott Travis), via Nuclear Blast Records.
In celebration of the release, the band have issued a music video for the title track, which can be found below.
Faulkner will be holding a signing session in Nashville, Tennessee on Saturday, May 27 at Grimey's starting at 5 PM. Go to the official Grimney's website here for complete information.
Order Elegant Weapons' Horns For A Halo album here.
Tracklisting:
"Dead Man Walking"
"Do Or Die"
"Blind Leading The Blind"
"Ghost Of You"
"Bitter Pill"
"Lights Out"
"Horns For A Halo"
"Dirty Pig"
"White Horse"
"Downfall Rising"
"Horns For A Halo" video:
“Do Or Die” video:
"Blind Leading The Blind" video:
Richie Faulkner recently joined SiriusXM’s Trunk Nation. During their conversation, Richie discusses a new Judas Priest album, as well as Elegant Weapons. SiriusXM's Trunk Nation, hosted by SiriusXM's Eddie Trunk airs daily at 3 PM, ET on SiriusXM’s Faction Talk.
On the new Judas Priest album, Faulkner says: "As far as I know, I think it's all tracked and recorded. The last thing we had to do was Rob's vocals, and I think they've been done. So, I was speaking to Andy earlier on, as I said, I speak to Andy every day. It's like we're a married couple, but I spoke to him earlier on. I think now all we've gotta do is mix it. We've gotta master it and we've gotta manufacture it. So, as you know, I mean, stuff like vinyl will take six to nine months nowadays. So even if we finished it, if we mixed it and mastered it today and submitted it to the record label, you can kind of work out how long it's gonna take for the actual thing to be manufactured. But as far as recording wise, we're all done. We've just gotta mix it up and everything.
And it sounds good, sounds great. I’m really excited. I can't give too much away. I've said before, it's a bit more progressive than Firepower in the sense that he's got a few more twists and turns musically, um, akin to like the Sinner or Tyrant, you know, he's got a few more musical passages and stuff like that. So, as you know, we couldn't make Firepower again. There's no real artistic mirror in that, and I don't think, you know, there's no point. We did Firepower. We just, we've gotta make something that's better, whether that's better sounding, you know, better songs, better performances, but it's gotta be quote unquote better than the last one. So we think it is, otherwise we wouldn't be releasing it. So, uh, it's exciting. We can't wait to get it out there to you all."
On Elegant Weapons, Richie shares: "Well, as you know, I joined Priest on a farewell tour, so, you know, that was back in 2011. And, you know, fortunately for the world, Priest are still going, we're still putting out new music, still touring. The world's a better place for it. But when I joined it was, you know, it was meant to be the last go round. I would've been silly really not to consider what I was gonna do after that. So the idea has been in my head for a while, as to what I'm gonna do when Priests call it a day. Um, and as I said, we from there, you know how it works. You do a live tour that fires you up, you go into the studio and put down some new ideas, and then you take those ideas onto the road and that fires you up again.
You go, you know, and the cycle continues, and here we are 12 years later. So Priest became my band. You know, it didn't work out as the final world tour. We kept it going and that was what I was doing for the last 12 years and still is. So I didn't really have a chance to put anything else together until the pandemic hit, really. And then no one was doing anything. Um, everyone was trying to figure out what to do, if we are ever gonna play live again. There was a point where I was thinking, “Is this it? And I'm sure there were some other musicians out there, they were thinking the same thing. You know, are we gonna actually go out and be touring musicians again, or is it gonna change completely?
So it gave me some time to consolidate a lot of ideas that I'd had and write new ones and put together something that I could maybe, you know, have I got an EP? Have I got an album? Have I got a band? What have I got here? You know, it kind of gave me the time to be able to do that. Um, and that's, this is the result, really. So I've got a collection of songs, and it was different to Priest. It was also important, you know, to have a, you know, a band that had a different sonic character to Priest. Otherwise, there'd be no point, man. You know, Priests have been gracious enough to let me contribute to the writing on the last two records and the one we're working on now. So if it sounded like a Priest record that that's what we do with Priest, there's no real point in me doing that. So it had to have its own sonic character, and it did."
