Judas Priest
British heavy metal band
Judas Priest are an English heavy metal band formed in Birmingham in 1969. They have sold over 50 million albums and are frequently ranked as one of the greatest metal bands of all time. They have been referred to as one of the pioneers of the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM) movement, and cited as a formative influence on metal subgenres, including speed metal, thrash metal, and power metal, as well as the hard rock and glam metal scenes of the 1980s. The band struggled without significant commercial success until 1980, when their sixth studio album British Steel brought mainstream attention.
During the 1970s, the core of bassist Ian Hill, lead singer Rob Halford and guitarists Glenn Tipton and K. K. Downing saw a revolving cast of drummers (with only Les Binks playing on more than one album), before Dave Holland joined in 1979. Since Holland's departure in 1989, Scott Travis has been the band's drummer. Halford left in 1992, and after a four-year hiatus, Judas Priest regrouped in 1996 with Tim "Ripper" Owens (formerly of Winter's Bane) replacing him. After two albums with Owens, Halford returned to the band in 2003. Downing left Judas Priest in 2011, replaced by Richie Faulkner. The current line-up consists of Hill, Tipton, Travis, Halford and Faulkner; although Tipton remains as an official member of the band, he has limited his touring activities since 2018 due to Parkinson's disease, with Andy Sneap filling in for him.
The public source identifies “Judas Priest” as british heavy metal band. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Judas, Priest and British.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q83468. VIAF identifies the subject as 125623893. The Library of Congress control number is n84039953. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1969, 1980, 1979 and 1989.
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This entry incorporates text from “Judas Priest” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.