Review: Judas Priest delivers for Minnesota’s ‘defenders of the metal faith’

Beavis and Butt-head are in the lexicon again. A new “Spinal Tap” movie is being made. There’s a renewed fear of an approaching apocalypse. Maybe it’s high time vintage heavy metal makes a major comeback, too.

That idea didn’t seem so boneheaded Thursday night at the Armory in Minneapolis, when one of metal’s greatest o.g. bands, Judas Priest, returned to a roomful of open arms and raised fists. Heck if they didn’t still sound hellishly powerful, too.

The motorcycle-employing British hard-rock vets are riding something of a late-career reup that includes their Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction and their 50th anniversary celebrations, both in 2022.

They’re not just motoring along on a nostalgia wave, though. They also rolled into town again with a well-received new album, “Invincible Shield.”

“We’ve been coming to this beautiful part of your country for so long,” Priest’s banshee-voiced frontman Rob Halford said in a mutual-admiration moment with the nearly 8,000 fans on hand. “Thank you for being defenders of the metal faith.”

At 72, Halford did not exactly look ageless. He walked slowly and mostly stood in a crouched-over position most of the night.

Since he bore a chrome dome even back in the hairspray-coated ‘80s, though — and his studded leather outfits stayed in rock fashion better than spandex — Halford’s age has long seemed to matter less than it does with many of his metallic peers with thinning, long hairdos. He’s become something of an LGBTQ icon, too, since opening up about his homosexuality in the 1990s.

What really mattered most in Thursday’s show, tough: Halford can still scream with a vengeance. He sounded as impressive bellowing new songs such as the manic show-opener “Panic Attack” as he did shrieking out 1982′s “Devil’s Child” six songs later.

Sure, Halford let the loud crowd do the heavy lifting in the big-chorused hits “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’,” “Breaking the Law,” “Hell Bent for Leather” and “Living After Midnight,” the latter two saved for the encore. But he hit the high notes when he needed to, most conspicuously in the less-familiar late ’70s oldies “Saints in Hell” and “Sinner.”

Mötley Crüe’s resident shrieker Vince Neil, by comparison, is a decade younger than Halford and performing in bigger venues, but he hasn’t been able to hit notes like those in over two decades.

The Crüe should be so lucky to have a replacement guitarist fit in as well as both of Priest’s current players, Richie Faulkner and Andy Sneap — the latter now standing in for heyday-era player Glenn Tipton, who has Parkinson’s disease and no longer tours. (The only other classic Priest member in tow Thursday besides Halford was bassist Ian Hill, whose steady presence was felt but not seen much; he’s always mostly stayed in the shadows.)

Faulkner and Sneap thrillingly evoked Tipton and ex-axman K.K. Downing in “Sinner” and another ‘70s nugget, “Victim of Changes.” They also hit their own high marks in the new album’s title track near show’s end.

Between the tight, rapid-fire guitar shredding and the still-scorching vocal screeching, Priest fans likely did not even notice that one other key element of a heavy metal show was missing Thursday night: Not a single ounce of pyro was blown off at the concert. Beavis and Butt-head would’ve loved it anyway.

Here’s Judas Priest’s set list from Thursday’s Armory concert: