Justin Tedaldi of Examiner.com recently conducted an interview with JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford and guitarist Richie Faulkner. An excerpt from the chat follows below.

Examiner.com: For the next project, I know you're all working on a new studio album. How's that coming along?

Halford: Fantastic. Really, really good. We've been saying that it's very important for PRIEST to kind of reinforce again a lot of the elements of what we do and what we're about to follow up from [the band's previous album] "Nostradamus". As much as that was a great moment for the band in the concept world, we want to get back to the roots of what we've been about for so many decades and just make one more great heavy metal album, meaning one of many. What we're trying to say is the next one is going to be a real hard and heavy and tough record.

Examiner.com: Are there any completed songs at this point?

Halford: Yeah. We have four tracks that we've got in the can. We're kind of looking at them again to see what else we can do, and the main reason we're saying that is because now we have Richie on board. And Richie's brought this great life, you know, this extra dimension of energy that has really been kind of infectious. We've all grown to love Richie as a player and as a songwriter, so he's added something new, and that's just kind of reenergized some areas that we're about. We've been writing a ton of material; we've got so much stuff in the can. We're tracking at the moment; we're just taking our time. It'll be ready when it's ready as we've been telling everybody, but it's a good message and a good signal to tell all the PRIEST fans that there's a new PRIEST record on the way.

Examiner.com: Will Richie be part of the writing process for the new PRIEST album?

Faulkner: Yeah. I take a recording rig out wherever I go; you never know where inspiration's going to hit you. When we were out on tour I took a little recording rig… sometimes when you're onstage playing, you get a little flash of inspiration when you [need] to scream into your phone or whatever. And the guys would be walking past, they'd hear it, and say, "Aww, that's a great riff, you've got to record that." So when we all got together — we got together for a couple of months last year in 2012, me, Glenn [Tipton] and Rob, and we threw all the ideas that we had in the hat, and we went from there, really. They've been great — you know, they could have just said, "This is the record we want you to play on," but they [said], "You're in the band and we want you to contribute," and they welcomed most of the ideas. It's just been a great creative team from the get-go, really. I've been a part of it and couldn't ask for anything more.

Read the entire interview from Examiner.com.