Friday, April 5: Halford, “Saviour”
Resurrection was a comeback and statement of intent for Rob Halford, striking a note of defiance in the face of irrelevance in its resolve to lean into the sound of the icon’s past. From top to bottom, his first release under the Halford banner spoke of perseverance and resilience, with “Saviour” closing the record in appropriately triumphant fashion. The track was a fine capper in its studio incarnation, and even more stirring on the subsequent Live Insurrection, where it aptly summed up the Metal God’s will to reclaim his perch among the genre’s foremost voices and figureheads. Patrick Lachman and Roy Z.’s writing recalled ‘80s Judas Priest without feeling like a self-conscious throwback, instead coming across as a natural traditional metal banger and finding that sweet spot between mid- and fast-paced. But most of all, there was Rob Halford, not only singing with a clarity and focus that he hadn’t shown since Fight’s War of Words, but also writing with a similar sense of motivation and lucidity, and in the end, “Saviour” simply sounded timeless.
