Judas Priest are releasing a new album.

The English heavy metal band, that formed in Birmingham over 50 years ago, surprised their fans on Saturday (07.10.23), while performing at the Power Trip Festival, in Indio, California, by announcing their highly anticipated 19th studio album titled ‘Invincible Shield’.

The long-awaited LP will be their first release in six years, and is the follow-up to 2018’s ‘Firepower’.

Whilst the record won’t be released till March 2024, fans can enjoy the first earworm set to arrive on Friday, October 13.

Taking to Twitter, Judas Priest wrote: “The New. Invincible Shield. March 8th 2024. Pre-order now.”

The album, which has been in the works since 2020, was originally put on hold due to the Coronavirus Pandemic.

In a previous interview, Judas Priest singer Rob Halford, told Iowa radio station Lazer 103.3: “We’ve already started work on it.

“We had some great writing sessions in the early part of this year until the world came to a stop in late March.

“I came back here [home] to Phoenix just to chill and relax for a bit and get ready for another writing session. ‘Cause that’s what we need to do as a band. You make a bunch of work and then you walk away from it and then you go back to it later and re-analyse it and continue the growth of the record.

“That’s what we were doing then, and we’re still doing it now – we’re still putting bits and pieces together. It’s an unusual way of making a record, but we’re not the only band that’s going through this situation in terms of creativity. You can’t let this pandemic stop you; you’ve gotta try and still get as much out of life as you can.”