{"id":12093,"date":"2026-02-13T17:08:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:08:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/12093\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T17:08:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T17:08:08","slug":"the-ballad-of-judas-priest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/12093\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The Ballad of Judas Priest’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIt is easy, oh so easy, to mock heavy metal. For 40 years, This Is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner\u2019s glorious spoof <\/a>of metal\u2019s OTT excess \u2014 all volume knobs, spandex and cartoonish sexism \u2014 has remained the pop-culture framing of the genre.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe directors behind The Ballad of Judas Priest<\/a> know this well. Instead of dodging the jokes, they own them.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe doc opens with comedian and Tenacious D frontman Jack Black delivering, straight-to-camera, a mock serious reading of the lyrics to Priest\u2019s \u201cYou Got Another Thing Comin\u2019\u201d from its 1982 album Screaming for Vengeance: \u201cOne life, I\u2019m gonna live it up\u2026 I\u2019m on the top as long as the music<\/a>\u2019s loud!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tJudas Priest frontman Rob Halford even references Spinal Tap\u2018s immortal \u201cturn it up to 11\u201d line. \u201cOh, god, I\u2019ve done it now,\u201d he quips.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNo one likes to take the piss out of heavy metal more than metal heads,\u201d says Sam Dunn, co-director of The Ballad of Judas Priest, \u201cThey love Spinal Tap, love Wayne\u2019s World<\/a>. There\u2019s a self-awareness there \u2014 the community knows how outrageous it can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThat sense of metal as a broader, more self-reflective culture is embodied by Dunn\u2019s co-director, Rage Against the Machine<\/a> co-founder Tom Morello \u2014 a Black, leftist activist musician better known for anti-authoritarian anthems (\u201cTake the Power Back,\u201d \u201cKilling in the Name\u201d) than leather studs and spandex.<\/p>\n

\n\tMorello convenes a \u201cJudas Priest Roundtable\u201d at the legendary Rainbow Bar and Grill on the Sunset Strip \u2014\u00a0bringing together Darryl McDaniels of Run-DMC, Scott Ian of Anthrax, Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan, and Lizzy Hale of Halestorm \u2014 to argue that metal, long caricatured as white, macho and politically reactionary, has always been more diverse, and contradictory, than its reputation suggests.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe goal of The Ballad of Judas Priest is not to mock metal, but to praise it, part of Dunn\u2019s decades-long project of rehabilitating the culture of metal through documentaries.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe old-school headbanger \u2014 \u201cI grew up in Victoria, B.C., I was a teenager in the \u201980s. Judas Priest, [Iron] Maiden, Metallica and Slayer were my music\u201d \u2014 Dunn returned to his first love after finishing a graduate degree in anthropology. \u201cI wanted to write a serious history of metal, and a friend said, \u2018Why not a documentary?\u2019\u201d he recalls.<\/p>\n

\n\tBeginning with Metal: A Headbanger\u2019s Journey (2005), Dunn\u2019s 20-year journey has included docs on Rush, Iron Maiden, Alice Cooper and now Judas Priest.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIn our first film, we stuck the flag in the ground and said Black Sabbath created the sound of heavy metal. But Judas Priest was the first band that really created the idea of a heavy metal identity and a heavy metal community. They made it about being part of a tribe \u2014 on stage and in the audience \u2014 and that was something new.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tPremiering at the Berlin Film Festival<\/a> Feb. 15, the doc traces the history and impact of the pioneering British rock band. But its emotional through line is Halford\u2019s personal struggles as a closeted gay man at the center of a genre perceived as \u201coverwhelmingly male, and brutally heteronormative.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe documentary \u201cis really a story of self sacrifice in a lot of ways,\u201d Dunn says, \u201cof a man who was prepared to sacrifice his happiness, his full expression of who is as a person for the betterment and advancement of his band.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile always accepted by his band mates \u2014 \u201che was our chum, part of our family,\u201d recalls Judas Priest bassist Ian Hill \u2014 Halford only came up publicly in an interview with MTV in 1998.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy first reaction was it\u2019s going to blow something up,\u201d Billy Corgan recounts in The Ballad of Judas Priest. \u201cI felt afraid for him, and afraid for the band. And then something amazing happened\u2026nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think the reaction to Rob coming out of the closet revealed that the metal community is much more open minded than what outsiders saw it as,\u201d says Dunn. \u201cBy the 90s, Rob Halford was our metal god. We didn\u2019t care what he did in his private life of what he and Judas Priest had created \u2014 a metal community where all us nerds in black could find a home.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It is easy, oh so easy, to mock heavy metal. For 40 years, This Is Spinal Tap, Rob…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12094,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[112,760,3146,761,4940,190,762,9341,1971,9342],"class_list":{"0":"post-12093","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-berlin","8":"tag-berlin","9":"tag-berlin-2026","10":"tag-berlin-film-festival","11":"tag-berlinale","12":"tag-berlinale-2026","13":"tag-germany","14":"tag-international","15":"tag-judas-priest","16":"tag-music","17":"tag-rage-against-the-machine"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12093","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12093"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12093\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12093"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12093"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/dk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12093"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}