From the very moment that Judas Priest guitarist K.K. Downing answers the phone with a spry “huh-low…” one feels an instant kinship with the amiable axe man. Armed with a Flying V guitar and flanked by a crew of heavy metal leather boys who looked like captains of gayest street gang in town, Judas Priest stood on the frontlines of the New Wave of British metal that took the world by storm in the late ‘70s. Now on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the band’s quintessential 1980 metal masterpiece, British Steel, the group is back on America soil, fronted again by the banshee yowl of vocalist Rob Halford and the other long-standing guitarist Glenn Tipton (along with some newer blood in the band). For this go around they're is playing British Steel in its entirety.

Chad Radford:  How’s it going man?

K.K. Downing:  Oh it’s going very well actually. I’m just sitting here in Dallas, getting ready to go to the venue where we’re ready to do some filming for an upcoming DVD. We’re filming one of our upcoming gigs in Florida and there may be some candid stuff in there as well, but we’re not sure really what’s going to happen with it. We’re thinking about putting it together with a reissue of the original British Steel, and making it something really nice. Record companies have to do that sort of thing these days, you know?

Indeed they do. The whole business model for the industry and young musicians is much different now from what it was like when Judas Priest was on the rise.

I don’t know how old you are, Chad, but do ou remember double gatefold LPs? Nowadays record companies put all of their money into making their records elaborate with all of these extra things included. It used to be really, really a lot like pulling teeth to get the record companies to spend any money at all on the packaging and things like that. Now they have to do it in order to get the people interested in spending money on it rather than just going to the computer and downloading what they want for free.

We are also a bit of an older band and so a lot of our fans are older as well. They can afford to buy records, and also just kind of keep adding to their record collections as they’ve been doing for some time. Like if someone like AC/DC puts out a new record, the company really puts a lot into it, but I hear people at record companies talking about how they get the music of younger bands out to younger people and its all straight to the download. It really is a sad affair.

Have you found that playing British Steel now in its entirety reveals anything new about the songs so many years later?

Yeah I have. It makes me think that we made some mistakes along the way. We’re playing all of the songs on the album, and a lot of them are being played live for the first time. You know, the tendency is to pick the same songs for the set lists over and over again, but let’s face it. A fan is a fan is a fan and they’re going to know songs like “Steeler,” “Grinder” and “Rage” just as well as they know “Breaking the Law” and will appreciate hearing them, maybe more than the others.

When Rob Halford came back into the band in 2004 give Judas Priest a spark of renewed energy?

Yes I really do think so. You know, he really was gone for a good long while. We went back and forth across the world a few times with Tim Owens, as did Rob with his new band at the time. It was good, and a lot of things changed for all of us. It was a period of growth for everyone, but Judas Priest hasn’t ever had a formula or stuck to the same tricks with each new album. It was all part of evolving, and when Rob came back into the group we all just kind of picked up the pieces were we left off. He needs to be here, I think of it like Queen without Freddy Mercury or Iron Maiden without Bruce Dickinson. He belongs in Judas Priest and that’s what people want to see, they want the spectacle; the real thing.

Speaking of spectacles, tell me about your love for the Flying V guitar.

I don’t know… It kicked off years ago I guess. Maybe it was just the fact that they were a pretty obscure instrument and they had a dynamic look. There were very few of them made and very few of them available – pretty special really. And being a guy way back then… If you want to get noticed when you’re putting a band together, all of those things; the add-ons that you can just have in your band that other people don’t have really go a long way. There is so much criteria that goes into putting a band together, and that was a large part of it, really. People want to remember what they saw as well as what they heard. I think about the first time that I saw the great Jimi Hendrix, and I remember how flamboyant he was and how visual he was and just how charismatic he was and how he put it all down into one thing. Visually it was very important. It wasn’t really until we did British Steel that we realized this. I often hear people talk about that album and ask what it is about British Steel that makes it feel so very cathartic. I think it was the album where Judas Priest got to where they wanted to be in terms of all of these things. The leather, the studs, the album’s cover art with the razor blade, the songs…. Everything was consolidated around that album, and particularly the band’s image. Everybody in the band was totally clad in leather and studs from that album onwards. Up until that album we were aspiring to be that image, and with British Steel we hit it.

I just watched the video for “Breaking the Law” and thought that you guys were dressed down a bit for that video.

You know, if you’re going to rob a bank you don’t want to look like a bank robber, do you? Do you know what I mean? He was a very clever guy, Julien Temple, the guy who directed that video. But we do have a lot of costumes on in there. He’s got us dressed up in priest’s outfits and he had us doing all sorts of things. We had a lot of fun making that video and obviously we did carry it further with the leather and things like that when we were playing live. It was just another step in making it to the Priest Armour that we used onstage.

Judas Priest plays the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater in Alpharetta on Thurs., Aug. 20.