Nergal and Rob Halford Want to Collaborate on a Black Metal Project Together
Last Friday, the day Judas Priest’s killer new album Firepower hit the waves, Noisey’s Kim Kelly published an in-depth interview with the man with whom the phrase “Metal God” has become synonymous: Rob Halford. You should absolutely read the interview in full — it touches on a whole lot more than just the new record — but this little juicy tidbit of the type we metal nerds love to obsess over has been making the rounds lately: Halford is interested in a black metal collaboration with Behemoth frontman Nergal.
Here’s the quote:
“I have to ask. When is your black metal project coming out? I was thinking about that as I was listening to this record, because the intro to “Necromancer” has the kind of cold, spooky vibe…”
“The black metal project! It keeps being about to lift the launchpad, but it never quite gets anywhere. I met Nergal from Behemoth recently, and I said to Nergal, ‘You know I love your kind of music. I would love to kind of put my toe into the water and see what would happen.’ So now I’ve got these two very nebulous but I hope at some point very real opportunities to do something with Nergal and still something to with Ihsahn. Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk, that’s my big Emperor album. Both of them are incredible—they just have this real mastery of their world.”
The idea of a black metal collaboration between Halford and Nergal would be fun to dream about even if it were only a pipe dream, but Nergal responded in kind by posting a screen shot of the headline on Instagram along with the following caption:
“Now fuckin’ deal with it!????Anyways… with such vibes within metal community the future has no fuckin’ limits, hm? @ihsahnofficial @robhalfordlegacy@judaspriest”
Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves here: Judas Priest just released an album and have a bunch of touring planned, while Behemoth are likely to be busy with a new record release and touring for the next one-and-a-half to two years, so if this project ever happens it’ll be quite a while before it does. But the craziest of ideas have to start somewhere, and this is as good a seed as any. We can only hope! If any of the aging metal gods could pull something like this off, it’s definitely Halford, always pushing forward. Like, can you imagine Lars even talking about black metal?
Once again: read the full Noisey interview here.
