{"id":470827,"date":"2026-02-15T22:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T22:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/470827\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T22:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T22:12:09","slug":"the-ballad-of-judas-priest-director-tom-morello-speaks-out-in-berlin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/470827\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Ballad Of Judas Priest’ Director Tom Morello Speaks Out in Berlin"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tMichelle Yeoh and Neil Patrick Harris<\/a> are among the stars who have shied away from making overt political statements at the Berlin Film Festival<\/a>, but musician-turned-director Tom Morello<\/a> is showing no such hesitation.<\/p>\n

\n\tAt the press conference for his Berlinale<\/a> world premiere documentary The Ballad of Judas Priest<\/a> on Sunday, a journalist for a Spanish radio outlet asked Morello about political content in cinema.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat a time to be alive where you can both make a documentary about one of your favorite bands and fight fascism at the same time,\u201d Morello declared. He went on to say of Judas Priest, the British heavy metal group, \u201cThe band\u2019s existence is very political.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Judas<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJudas Priest<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPaul Natkin via Cache Agency<\/p>\n

\n\tThe documentary, directed by Morello and Sam Dunn<\/a>, examines the rise of the band in the late 1960s in Birmingham, England, lead singer Rob Halford<\/a>\u2019s decision to come out as gay, and the civil trial in Nevada in 1990 that saw the group sued for allegedly delivering subliminal Satanic messages through their songs that convinced two youths to kill themselves. A judge eventually dismissed that case.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I\u2019ve seen Judas Priest over the course of the last decade or so in Los Angeles, the audiences may be more than 50 percent Latino,\u201d said Morello, the guitarist, singer and songwriter known for his work with Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave. \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of gay couples, sort of nothing that has anything to do with the stereotypical [metal fans] \u2014 and yes, there are some older dudes like myself in leather jackets proudly bringing their kids to the show as well \u2014 but that community and the unity and the harmony that exists at a Judas Priest show is in some ways a model for how we might all do better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"(L-R)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Sam Dunn, Rob Halford and Tom Morello pose at the \u2018The Ballad Of Judas Priest\u2019 photocall at the 76th Berlin Film Festival Berlin on February 15, 2026.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGerald Matzka\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tHalford joined Morello and Dunn at the Berlinale press conference and noted he doesn\u2019t steer clear of politics in his music.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s been impossible for me as a lyricist to not avoid seeing things in the world that affect me, that get me pissed off and thinking, is there a way I can put this into a song? And I\u2019ve been doing that forever\u2026 I really have to temper myself because as I\u2019ve gotten older, I\u2019ve gotten angrier with the world,\u201d he said, adding an apparent reference to the LGBTQ community. \u201cI\u2019ve gotten angrier with the injustice, particularly for my own people who are still suffering, are not given the human rights that they absolutely deserve. I\u2019m not talking about Germany, I\u2019m talking about Saudi Arabia, Iran, other parts of the world where people like myself are just used and abused in horrible ways. So, I try my best to avoid that type of explicit message, but it\u2019s there. It\u2019s there, and that gives me some comfort that I\u2019m not letting myself down consciously on subjects that mean a lot to me and piss me off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film festival program says of the documentary, \u201c[T]he film captures how Judas Priest defined the sound and look of metal, and also made it more inclusive. Sexuality, censorship, community \u2013 The Ballad of Judas Priest speaks directly to our current moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe late Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Run-DMC, and Smashing Pumpkins co-founder Billy Corgan are among the prominent recording artists who appear in the documentary. So does Jack Black, the actor and musician.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cJack Black, who I play Dungeons & Dragons with every week, is [in the movie], he\u2019s spectacular,\u201d Morello noted. \u201cHe\u2019s a scene steeler \u2014 surprise, surprise.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tMorello commented, \u201cThere are two goals in making this film. One was to deliver the goods for Judas Priest fans. Judas Priest fans love and are committed to this band, and we wanted to give them a movie that was going to check every single box for them. The other goal was that if you\u2019ve never heard a note of Judas Priest music, maybe you sort of vaguely have heard the name once or twice, the narrative themes in this, the human stories are so compelling that it doesn\u2019t matter if you [don\u2019t] like heavy metal music, don\u2019t like Judas Priest music at all, that the stories of these people and their 50 years together and the ways that they\u2019ve shaped and changed culture in and of itself is a great enough story to tell, even if they were not one of the greatest heavy metal bands of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michelle Yeoh and Neil Patrick Harris are among the stars who have shied away from making overt political…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":470828,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[191249,200165,88,216,127613,218553,218554,13105],"class_list":{"0":"post-470827","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-berlin-film-festival","9":"tag-berlinale","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-rob-halford","13":"tag-sam-dunn","14":"tag-the-ballad-of-judas-priest","15":"tag-tom-morello"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=470827"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/470827\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/470828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=470827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=470827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=470827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}