Behind Judas Priest’s Invincible Shield, with Andy Sneap

Since stepping in as Judas Priest’s touring guitarist in 2018, English guitarist, producer, and composer Andy Sneap has become an integral force behind the metal legends. Most recently, he took the reins as producer on Invincible Shield – the band’s thunderous 19th studio album, released in 2024. In this interview, Sneap pulls back the curtain on the album’s creation, teases what’s coming next from the band, and doesn’t hold back on why he refuses to mix Judas Priest in Dolby Atmos.

What’s a typical week looking like for you at the moment?

I'm currently in the B room in my studio doing some intros. We've been doing this Painkiller set with Judas Priest in the summer, so I’m sorting intros and little bits and pieces today. It's sort of soundtrack stuff.

What can you tell us about the tour?

We're doing some dates with the Scorpions, Opeth and Queensrÿche and then we pick up the Painkiller tour. We start that in June and go all the way through until the end of July, where we finish at the O2 in London. 

Then I’ve got a month off, and then there are more dates that haven't been announced yet, so we've got a busy year. We're doing the majority of the Painkiller album on the summer dates, and we've got some segues to join some of the tracks together. 

There's some of the bits off the album that we're going to use, and some spoken intro parts, and an intro to the set that I'm putting together. We've got that and we are writing for another record that we're going to look at sometime in the near future.

Do you like being on the road?

I love it, to be honest. I actually live better on the road than I do at home. I get my laundry done, I get fed. I'm staying in nice hotels and going on a private jet. I love some of that! It's a dream come true, to be honest. 

When I left school and I did three albums as a guitar player, I never dreamt I'd be doing it at this level, this late in my life. 

So to get the chance to get out there and play on stages the sizes we play on with one of my favourite bands, I must have done something right in a previous life.

Invincible Shield marks your second album as the producer for Judas Priest, following Firepower in 2018. What did you aim to achieve differently with this album compared to your previous work with the band?

We had to treat it a little differently, partly because of the whole COVID thing. We got a lot of demos together before that. I wouldn't say it was any more stressful than doing Firepower. We just did what was natural to everyone. That was the same with Richie and the riffs he was writing – he was putting forward what he felt comfortable with, and what he was feeling, musically.

It has a very natural way of coming together. Rob has got a certain approach of how he puts things down. We'd sit there and we'd go over verses, bridges, and choruses and piece the songs together and see what felt right. 

If we needed to add any parts, key changes, or make the tempo move a little bit more, or if we wanted to take it up in register with the vocal, we did. It's all a natural progression. We just kept going over parts until we felt we were right with it.

Could you describe your production process for Invincible Shield? How did you manage recording sessions spread across different locations with band members on tour?

It was just what was convenient, schedule-wise. We knew we had a rehearsal scheduled in Nashville, so it made sense because Scott lives in Nashville as well. So we thought, ‘Let's get the drums down, and then at least we've got something we can be working on as we go on tour.’

We'd had some writing sessions at Glenn’s and got the basic structures together. It was pieced together a little bit more than we did with Firepower. We didn't manage to get everyone in the same spot on this one, whereas before we had everyone over at Glenn’s, where we could jam it out as a band.

For this one, we had demos, and we did the drums before we did a US run. We went into the studio for two weeks in Nashville and got the drums down. Richie did the guitars in his own studio in Nashville. The bass we actually did on the road. 

On days off, I had a little Pro Tools rig out with me, and I would just sit there with Ian, slowly going through the album and getting the bass down on the album. Then we had two sessions in Phoenix with Rob doing vocals. I was in charge, as producer, of getting all the information together and making it all gel.

Then it was a good month spent on the mix going over and over and over it to the point where I didn't know what I was listening to anymore [laughs]. It always ends up like that.

I was to be able to work on this because on tour, we have a lot of downtime. So rather than watching Netflix, I think we're better off tracking an album. They’re getting a good deal out of me! [laughs] But I don't mind because I've always enjoyed that creative side of things and putting things together. 

And I get bored so easily. I don't like sitting around doing nothing. So to have the chance of putting something together on the road and being creative is good. I've always got a Pro Tools rig out with me. I spent the whole European tour working on the Dream Theater album on my days off, and then I mixed it in August at home.

Richie Faulkner said that the album was not a musical continuation of the experimental Nostradamus or as progressive, but more like '70s Judas Priest. How did this factor into your production process in terms of capturing Judas Priest's classic heavy metal sound?

It didn't really! It is a continuation of Firepower, in a way that it's a little bit heavier. It's got some busier riffs in it. Some of the arrangements are a little bit more complicated. 

People always go, ‘It's more progressive’ if they start sticking more riffs in. There are some interesting twists and turns. Richie has got a really good ear for melody and where to take things that are a little bit more unexpected.

The mix is governed by what they bring to the table. I never sit there as a producer and think, ‘We need to take it in this direction’. It's just: are the songs good enough? That's what it comes down to at the end of the day. You try to get a balanced mix with what you're given. We just let it naturally take its own course.

Bands always have to have something to say about an album description, but really, if I'm honest, it is its own entity. People always want a bit of an angle when they're doing interviews on new albums, and they're always, ‘We’re going back to the roots.’

Would you like to set the record straight now on Invincible Shield with regards to that?

I'd say…it's just a natural progression. How about that?

Panic Attack and other singles from Invincible Shield received a positive reception. How do you navigate the balance between meeting fan expectations for Judas Priest's sound and pushing creative boundaries?

I don't really, because I'm a fan, and I've been a fan for years. If it's good enough for me and I like it, then that's the only way I can judge it. If you start worrying about other people's opinions, you're not going to be focused. Richie, Rob and Glenn write from the heart and write what is true to them. 

As a producer, I've got to do what I feel is right for the songs, so I don't really think about other people's opinions. You go on your gut instinct, and that's always been the way that I've seen things. That's all you can do. Hopefully, people agree with you and come along for the ride. I mean, you can do an album you think it's great and it gets a bad response, and you're baffled by it. 

But usually, you know if you've got something good, deep down. You'll listen to it, and think, ‘Yeah, we got it there.’ If we did have doubts, we would go back to the table with it and we wouldn't rush a release out just for the sake of putting something out. It would be a case of, ‘What do we need to do? Why isn't this meeting expectations?’ and we'd go back and revisit some songs and pull them apart.

Do you read the comments online?

I try not to. It can absolutely devastate you, to be honest. I was sitting with the Alice In Chains guys when I first got asked to do the live stuff, and I was talking to them about how brutal the crowd and the comments could be. 

They said, ‘It's white noise; it's chatter. It's going on all the time. Ignore it. If you ignore it, it actually doesn't exist, because no one's actually taking any notice of what the chat is saying. 

You've just got to go out there and give your all, and that's all you can do.’ Just put everything into it, and the general fan base will come along with you because they believe in you.

There's so many internet experts out there that haven't worked a day in the music business or a day in a band, and you can read their comments and take it to heart. Whether they're listening to it on a broken speaker, or they've got a totally different point of view on how a song should be. 

You don't know what their background is, and it reads like they're an expert. So it can really throw you. As long as you put 100% into it and you're 100% happy with it, you should stay well away from the comments. 

Just do your own thing, because that's why people employ you and why people want to work with you. If you start following trends and listening to comments outside of your inner circle, then you can end up in a bad place.

Is there a standout track on the album that you are particularly proud of?

There’s not one particular track. I thought the heavier elements of the album, like Panic Attack, Invincible Shield, The Serpent and the King harked back a little bit to Painkiller, which was what we wanted to kick the album off with. 

We wanted to get a 1,2,3 punch to the start of the album. The faster songs are always fan favourites, especially in places like South America, where they like the heavier stuff. But we always try to keep it a little bit balanced as well with stuff like Gates of Hell and Crown of Horns, because we need to have melodic stuff on a Priest record as well. 

We're always trying to create a balance. It can't be one thing all the way through. The slower stuff always gives you a little bit more room with the low end and reverbs, and the faster stuff, you have to tighten up a little bit more.

What can we expect from the new Judas Priest album?

We’re gonna go back to the roots [laughs]. There's going to be another album, for sure. We're going to start putting ideas together. Rich has got a whole bunch of ideas. 

Glenn's got a few things that are in the pipeline. We're going to start putting ideas together with Rob and piecing things together over the next year while we're together on the road. There's going to be another record for sure.

You’ve been using Genelec 1031 studio monitors for years, which are a legacy model now. What initially drew you to this particular model, and why have they remained a staple in your studio setup all these years?

Well, everyone's got them! I was working all over the planet in different studios and everywhere had 1031s. So it's that familiarity. I found a 5.1 studio that had cleared out. I don't know if they went bust or what. I bought five 10301s and the sub, and I've got enough for the B room and I've got enough for the A room. 

It's just what I'm used to. It's like with your hearing – you know what your hearing is like, so you know what your speakers are like, and you know what you're doing with them. Both rooms sound pretty similar to me, just purely because I've got the same monitoring in both of them. I can go between the two, no problem at all. I

'll use the Genelecs and the sub to make sure the low end is in the right place, the high end is not too spitty, and the vocals are sat right. I have 1031s in the main room as well, and everything that I do on those, I can tell where the low end is and what's going on in the mids.

You are not a fan of Dolby Atmos music. What is it about the format that you don’t like?

I've had guys at the major labels saying, ‘We are being shoehorned by Apple to get Atmos mixes,’ and that's exactly what's happening. 

They’re sort of blackmailing the labels so they can sell their headphones. Every Apple device you get is actually set to default for Atmos. So if you're just listening to it as normal, you're listening to a downmix of an Atmos rather than the stereo mix. 

A lot of people don't realise that. I've not heard an Atmos mix that beats a stereo mix yet, with the metal side of things. I just don't like the separation. I don't like the fact that you can't master it like we do a stereo mix. It loses the glue.

Also, it's a very isolated way of listening to music, because, with Atmos, you've got to sit in the middle of a room that's set up properly to hear how the mix should sound. 

How many people have got an Atmos system at home that's set up correctly for music? I don't know a single person, and every studio that I've been in with Atmos sounds completely different. You're just separating things for the sake of Apple selling headphones.

Have you worked on any Atmos mix that you thought sounded passable?

I've worked closely with Mark Gittins and he's taken my stereo mix and applied it as closely as he can to the Atmos mix. We've sat there forever going over it, making sure the mix doesn't lose anything. We've got a little bit of a formula of working from the stems that I give him from the desk, but it's so much hassle, and you're always just chasing the stereo mix. 

I want to hear a band in front of me, I don't want to be in the middle of it unless it's a live DVD or something. I can see how it applies to that. And the Dream Theater record as well – there are segments in that where it was more atmospheric, which it can lend itself to.

Have you been asked to mix a Judas Priest in Atmos?

I have, and I say no. I won't do it. I give it to someone else to do. I don't want anything to do with it. 10 years ago, we were doing 5.1 mixes because you could encode it onto CDs at the time and it was a bonus that the labels could use to sell another 500 albums. 

This is another thing that's come along. I think it lends itself to film and certain types of music. I haven't heard a metal mix and thought, ‘Yeah, that's great.’ With the more progressive stuff, maybe you can go somewhere with some of that, but, I don't think the consumer has got the setup to appreciate what you're trying to do with it.

Is there anything that could change your mind about Dolby Atmos music? Or do you think stereo will always be the gold standard for metal?

I might be wrong. I might be long in the tooth and just set in my ways. I don't think I am, though. I don't see people embracing it like the labels hope they do. 

My gut instinct tells me that people are quite happy with stereo and just listening to it on their phones these days. I'm more concerned about how a mix sounds on an iPhone when it's tipped on its side, rather than doing a Dolby Atmos mix.

Photo credits: Artur Tarczewski / Jamie Huntley