KK's Priest

About KK's Priest

KK's Priest is what happens when a founding member leaves one of heavy metal's most important bands and decides the story isn't quite finished. KK Downing spent four decades as Judas Priest's co-lead guitarist before walking away in 2011, citing management issues and a general breakdown in working relationships. For nearly a decade, it seemed like that was that. Then in 2020, he announced he was forming a new band, and the name made his intentions pretty clear.

The lineup he assembled reads like a Judas Priest family reunion. Tim "Ripper" Owens handled vocals—the same guy who fronted Judas Priest from 1996 to 2003 after Rob Halford's first departure. Les Binks came in on drums, having played on Priest classics like "Stained Class" and "Hell Bent for Leather" in the late seventies. Add guitarist A.J. Mills, bassist Tony Newton, and you had a group with legitimate Priest DNA, even if half of them never overlapped in the original band.

Their debut album "Sermons of the Sinner" dropped in 2021, and it didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was: classic-era Judas Priest worship from people who helped create that sound. Tracks like "Hellfire Thunderbolt" and "The Return of the Sentinel"—a direct sequel to Priest's "The Sentinel"—leaned hard into twin guitar harmonies, galloping rhythms, and Owens hitting those upper register screams he's always done well. The production was big and modern, but the songwriting came straight from the late seventies and early eighties playbook.

Whether this project exists as tribute, continuation, or pointed statement depends on who you ask. Downing has been diplomatic in interviews, usually saying he just wanted to keep playing this style of metal. But naming your band KK's Priest and hiring your replacement's replacement as singer sends a message, intentional or not. It's not hostile exactly, just... pointed.

They followed up with "The Sinner Rides Again" in 2023, which refined the formula without reinventing it. Songs like "One More Shot at Glory" and "Strike of the Viper" showed a band getting more comfortable with its identity, even if that identity was essentially "what if Judas Priest never stopped sounding like 1979."

Currently, they're an active touring unit playing festivals and headline shows, drawing crowds who want to hear this particular strain of British metal done by people who actually invented parts of it. It's a strange second act—not quite a reunion, not quite a tribute band, not quite a new chapter. Just a group of guys in their sixties and seventies who still know how to make guitars sound like air raid sirens and apparently aren't done yet.

Their sets hit like a punch in the chest. Tipton's playing is precise and heavy, crowd feeds off the no-nonsense energy. People come to hear metal played right by people who invented how it's done. Owens commands the stage with genuine intensity, not theater. Shows feel less like performances than like being let into something.

Known for Sermons of the Sinner, After All the King's Men, Made in Japan, Lost and Found, Roadsong

See KK's Priest Live