(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Sun 1 March 2026 21:15, UK
The lead vocalist for heavy metal band Judas Priest knows a worthy adversary when it screams into his face.
According to Rob Halford, Motörhead’s most memorable work is the fruit of its 20th studio album, Motorizer, with his favourite song by the band infuriatingly chosen by the World Wrestling Entertainment as a theme song in 2008.
The 2008 ‘Rock Out’ is not as cliché as its title might suggest but is an upbeat roar of energy that fits perfectly into the Motörhead formula, which innovates without steering away from what their fans love to hear. One of those fans is unapologetically also a Judas Priest, as he gushed to Metal Hammer, “Lemmy was such a brilliant songwriter. I’m so glad we have songs like ‘Rock Out‘, where Lemmy can just growl ‘Rock out with your cock out’. It’s pure genius! It says so much about who they are, about going to a show and just letting loose.”
He recalled nostalgically last year, “It seems like just yesterday we last saw them, it always feels like I’m just going to bump into him at a festival somewhere. But their music will live forever, and that’s all that matters.”
Of course, his reference and songwriting admiration were pointing at the band’s founder and lead vocalist, the ten-year deceased Lemmy Kilmister. ‘Rock Out’ holds one of Lemmy’s clearest vocal deliveries and is a loud signal of a singer really rocking out and having fun with his music. His mocking lyrics are childish in the best way, keeping stardom real in Motörhead’s sordid, metal language.
It has to be said that the song wasn’t anything groundbreaking for the band. It has a very similar main riff and drum pattern to many of their other songs, and in keeping with their usual music, it may also sound dated. Since I know any Motörhead fan would thus be encouraged to bang their head at me aggressively, I’ll simply say that ‘Rock Out’ is a trip into their nostalgic early days of rebellious old school ’80s metal rock.
Judas Priest was similar in this style, as both bands bridged hard rock and heavy metal in the ’70s, laying the foundation for the more aggressive speed and thrash metal genres celebrated today, as well as innovating the haggard, leather-clad style now widely associated with metal, and proudly pioneering a long-hair pirate aesthetic coming from almost all of their members. The two were also among the first to strip the loose, bluesy elements from the early heavy metal movement and bring the volume up.
Halford wasn’t alone in rocking out, as shortly after the album’s release, a 50-year-old man developed a blood clot due to head-banging at a Motörhead concert, with researchers having already linked whiplash, artery dissection, and even neck fractures to head-banging before.
The band that had broken The Who’s previous world record for ‘The Loudest Band in the World’ in 1984 is able to rain plaster on their audience’s heads, melt their faces, cause blood clots, and also call on them to rock out, so no matter what you think of their music, that’s got to call for some respect.