![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/b172313c9440e7e039e62b86a90a8dd4bf-judaspriest.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
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\n Photo: Paul Natkin via Cache Agency\n <\/p>\n
Apologies, but I have to start this one with a personal anecdote. In elementary school, I was obsessed with heavy metal and with Judas Priest in particular. I even saw them in concert, my dad leaving work in his suit and tie one evening to take me and my bandanna-wearing pals to the Metal Defender tour in 1984. (We were 11, and we\u2019d all given each other heavy-metal nicknames; mine was Ozzy Three.) I was also at the 1986 Capital Centre concert later immortalized in Jeff Krulik\u2019s amazing short Heavy Metal Parking Lot<\/a>. I grew up and out of that headbanger phase not long after, but I still maintained a soft spot for Priest because their hard-charging songs were the most melodic and operatic in all of metal, with Rob Halford\u2019s thunderous voice joining Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing\u2019s double-guitar attack to create the band\u2019s majestic, unreal sound.<\/p>\n All of which is to say that I did not enter the Berlin Film Festival screening of Tom Morello and Sam Dunn\u2019s documentary The Ballad of Judas Priest a disinterested observer. I\u2019ve been at plenty of premieres in my life, but even my jaded self shivered a little upon seeing Rob Halford in person, a bushy-bearded metal god still with regal presence at 74. And Morello and Dunn\u2019s movie is very much for aficionados, more a love letter than a thorough, hard-hitting deep dive. It opens with Jack Black in close-up reciting the lyrics of \u201cYou\u2019ve Got Another Thing Comin\u2019\u201d like it was something out of Shakespeare. (\u201cOne life, I\u2019m gonna live it up \u2026\u201d), and that kind of fanboy energy dominates the proceedings.<\/p>\n The central attraction here are the band members themselves, of course, and Halford specifically, as they hit all the main points: childhoods spent in England\u2019s soot-covered industrial region known as the Black Country, their early years as a so-called \u201cprogressive blues\u201d band, their adoption of the metal-and-studs look. Halford, who officially came out in 1998, discusses how it was an early Doris Day performance that inspired him to become a singer. Tipton talks about his Parkinson\u2019s diagnosis and how he felt it had been a long time coming. Downing talks about his decision to leave the band after years of feeling like it had taken over his life. The most moving parts of the film involve Halford talking about his sexuality and the relief he felt upon finally coming out. He expected controversy and backlash; instead, he got almost nothing but love and support.<\/p>\n Still, the film could have expanded its emotional scope a bit more. When Halford opens up about the challenges of not being able to live publicly as a gay man in the early years (even though his bandmates and their management knew and accepted him), one wonders how his partners during this time felt. The only other major drama the documentary spends any length of time with is the notorious 1990 trial<\/a> in which the band was accused of putting subliminal messages in a song after the double suicide of two young men. Prosecutors claimed that the words \u201cdo it\u201d were secretly embedded in the music; an analysis of the individual audio tracks eventually proved that no such thing existed.<\/p>\n