british heavy metal legends JUDAS PRIEST played at 3Arena in Dublin, Ireland on Friday, March 15 as part of the band’s “Invincible Shield” European tour.
PRIEST‘s 17-song setlist included the live debuts of “Sword Of Damocles”which originally appears on the band’s 2014 album “Redeemer Of Souls”and “Crown Of Horns”a track from the group’s latest album, “Invincible Shield”. PRIEST also brought back “Sinner” for the first time since 2019 and played “You Don’t Have To Be Old To Be Wise” for the first time since 2009.
PRIEST‘s setlist for the Dublin concert was as follows:
01. Panic Attack
02. You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’
03. Breaking The Law
04. Rapid Fire
05. Sword Of Damocles (live debut)
06. Love Bites
07. Saints In Hell
08. Crown Of Horns (live debut)
09. Turbo Lover
10. Invincible Shield
eleven. Sinner (first time since 2019)
12. You Don’t Have To Be Old To Be Wise (first time since 2009)
13. The Green Manalishi (With The Two Prong Crown) (FLEETWOOD MAC cover)
14. painkiller
Encore:
fifteen. The Hellion / Electric Eye
16. Hell Bent For Leather
17. Living After Midnight
In a recent appearance on The Break Down With Nath & Johnny podcast, JUDAS PRIEST bassist Ian Hill was asked who in the band has the final say when it comes to picking a setlist for the PRIEST live shows. I responded: “Well, it is probably Rob [Halford, PRIEST singer], really. But then again, we’ve got a whole spectrum now. You’ve got the younger element with Richie [Faulkner, PRIEST guitarist]. He’s the same age as my eldest son. And then you eat Scott [Travis, PRIEST drummer] and you’ve got Glenn [Tipton, PRIEST guitarist], of course. He can’t do it anymore [due to his battle with Parkinson’s disease]. [But] he’s still sharp as a pin between his ears. Then Andy [Sneap, PRIEST touring guitarist] and Rob and myself. So you’ve got a full spectrum there of ages. So everybody has their own favorites and their own types of JUDAS PRIEST song. We all sort of [go], ‘Yeah, like that. No, don’t like that one.’ And then we’ll go. If someone’s adamant that they really don’t want to do something, well, you don’t want to do something, and vice versa — if someone really wants to do a particular track, you do it. Like I say, you’ve got the ring-fence tracks there that you’ve gotta do — the ‘Breaking The Law’s and the ‘Living After Midnight’s and things like that, that you have to do. It’s what brings people to the shows, basically. And then you’ve got your other sort of classic PRIEST songs, which is a little bit easier because you can swap and change those between — do a month maybe using one song, change it to another one of a similar kind. And then try to get some new stuff in there — three, maybe four maximum is about as much as you can get at any one time. I’m sure there’ll be more than that, that we’ll go through. And just swap and change as we go.”
Asked if there are any songs that he can think of straight off the top of his head, in the PRIEST back catalog that he really loves to play live but never has, Ian said: “Ah, there’s one that we have played live that we haven’t played for a while and that’s ‘Dissident Aggressor’. I still say that’s probably my all-time favorite song. It’s just so raw — it’s just pure rock, really. It’s one of those songs that, even in the studio, I can remember it being — it’s two guitars, bass, drums and vocals. And I think there might be one extra guitar on there through the lead break. Other than that, it’s totally raw. It’s exactly as it would be on stage. And I love that song, apart from it being a great song. And there’s always other things. We’ve never really done ‘Before The Dawn’ — from the other point of view, the other end of the spectrum, if there’s a quiet part in [the show]. These days people tend to prefer the more upbeat stuff rather than the quieter pieces. But that would be cool to do as well. It’s only about two and a half, three minutes long anyway, so it wouldn’t take much time. But there’s loads in there — there’s loads of them. ‘Sinner’ we haven’t done, so it’d be great to do that again. We haven’t done that for a while. But we’ll see.”
In a separate interview with Metal Pilgrim, Halford spoke about the setlist for the European leg of PRIEST‘s “Invincible Shield” tour with SAXON and URIAH HEEP. He said: “We’ve had this conversation before as far as trying to put the setlist together. And after 19 studio albums, it’s, like, ‘Oh my God. Where do we go?’ If we didn’t play ‘Breaking The Law’, there’d be a riot. If we didn’t play ‘Painkiller’, there’d be a riot. There are certain songs that you are indebted to your fans to play, because they’re part of the fabric of who you are as a band. Without naming names, there are certain bands where you know you wanna hear that song when you go to a show. So there’s a portion of the setlist that already writes itself. Having said that, yeah, we are gonna go quite deep, and we found some songs from previous albums that we’re gonna work with and we’re gonna bring out. So there’ll probably be at least two or three deep cuts on this setlist.”
Rob continued: “At any given moment, we’ve got 60 to 70 songs we can play — at any given moment. And then we’re gonna add more into the mix. It’s fun to see the texts and the e-mails flying through : ‘Well, I’ll give you this one if you give me that one.’ ‘Cause you’ve gotta find a balance. When a band plays on stage, every single band member has to agree on the set list. There’s no place for, ‘Oh, dude, I’ve gotta play this one.’ There’s no place for that. You’ve all gotta be believing in that particular song as you go through the show. And it’s gonna be fantastic. And this is gonna be a really eventful tour as we’re about to kick off in Europe, with our friends SAXON and URIAH HEEP“
Hill is the sole remaining original member of PRIESTwhich formed in 1969. Halford joined the group in 1973 and Tipton signed on in 1974. Rob left PRIEST in the early 1990s to form his own band, then came back to PRIEST in 2003. Original guitarist KK Downing parted ways with the band in 2011, and was replaced by Faulkner.
JUDAS PRIEST‘s latest album, “Invincible Shield” has entered the UK chart at No. 2, just behind Ariana Grande‘s “Eternal Sunshine”.
Prior to “Invincible Shield”‘s arrival, PRIEST‘s highest UK chart achievement was with 1980’s “British Steel”which reached No. 4.
PRIEST‘s 2018 album “Firepower” entered the chart at No. 5.
“Invincible Shield” es JUDAS PRIEST‘s fifth Top 10 album, after the aforementioned “British Steel” and “Firepower”as well as 2014’s “Redeemer Of Souls” (No. 6) and the 1979 live album “Unleashed In The East” (No. 10).
“Invincible Shield” has already landed at No. 1 in Germany, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, as well as No. 5 in France, No. 8 in Italy and No. 16 in Australia.
