British heavy metal legends Judas Priest just released their 19th studio album, Invincible Shield, this past week and, in doing so, they supposedly set a new record in heavy metal history. According to Loudwire, the new release makes Judas Priest the first heavy metal band to release two albums 50 years apart, namely the band’s debut album, Rocka Rolla, from 1974, and Invincible Shield in 2024. Heavy metal is officially old as dirt.
That achievement comes with a few caveats, though. While there’s obviously some debate over which is the earliest heavy metal album, many point to Black Sabbath’s 1970 self-titled debut as the first album of the genre, and, in fact, Sabbath had five albums out before Judas Priest released their first in 1974. But Sabbath falls well short of the record as their most recent album, 13, came out in 2013. Since then, Ozzy Osbourne has been focusing his time on his solo work and becoming a progressively weirder person, and if you count from Black Sabbath’s debut album to Osbourne’s most recent solo work, that spans more than 50 years.
Still, there were other bands that are sometimes thought of as heavy metal who predate that first Sabbath album, including Led Zeppelin who put out their first album in 1969. But Zeppelin haven’t put out an album since 1979. Similarly, Deep Purple are referred to as a pioneering heavy metal band and have put out albums 50 years apart, but their earliest albums are debatable as to whether they’re metal or simply proto-metal.
In that case, it would probably be more accurate to say that Judas Priest are the first band to release two undeniably heavy metal albums 50 years apart. But, considering that metalheads—and music nerds in general—love to argue about these things, I’m sure that there will be plenty of metalheads ready to explain why Judas Priest wasn’t the first band to pull this off.