John Bush on 80s Heavy Metal Podcast: Armored Saint, Anthrax Talk [19:01-24:01]

But for now, this is what we're doing, and I think the shows are going to be great, and it takes themselves already been really great for these shows, so we'll figure it out as we go. Sometimes I do that a little too much, and you know, does it always bode well, but I do it like that's kind of the way I roll sometimes, and you know, these shows are going to be great. Absolutely, man. It's the album that shocked the world, Judas Priest's Turbo. In 1986, when Heavy Metal embraced the glam of air metal, Judas Priest followed suit, unleashing Turbo. It divided fans, rocked MTV, and sparked controversy that still echoes today. In cause and effect Turbo, Chris Akin dives deep into the making of this polarizing album, sharing insider stories and personal memories from that explosive era. Whether you loved it or you hated it, Turbo left its mark on Heavy Metal History. Relive the controversy. Get your copy now at ChrisAkin.net or on Amazon. Well, let's go, let's switch directions a little bit here, let's talk about the upcoming tour with Michael Shanker. Obviously, if you're a metalhead, that's a tour you need to see. I mean, it's as simple as that. That's an easy one for you guys, for Armored Saint, and I have been fascinated about this pretty much since you guys put the band back together, you always seem to 90% of the times I've seen you since bringing the band back has been in an opening slot. You guys like to go out there and challenge other bands to raise their game. I've seen you with a lot of other bands that you guys blow everybody off the stage. I'm not just kissing your ass, I'm telling you that is a fact. For you, is that the goal? Is it your goal to get out there early and just mow them down? Well, you know, we're all honored when we get a chance to play with anybody. Michael Shanker or Wasp, we toured. We're actually doing three shows in England with Wasp before the Shanker tour, and that's why we couldn't do the whole Shanker tour because we already committed to these three shows in England with Wasp at the end of this month, and we're really excited about those shows. The Wasp tours have been awesome with us around the states the last couple of years. Queen's right, we toured with Saxon. We're just happy to be able to go out with somebody, and usually it's something that our agent finds and says this would be a good tool for you guys. Let's go out and do it. So we're like game. We'd go out and play on our own. We did a bunch of highlight shows in Europe last year, and we're doing a couple actually in conjunction with this tour, playing in Pomona on our own, which is basically just east of downtown LA, and we're doing El Paso, which we haven't played in like 30 years and Vegas again because it's Vegas. So we still do some headlight shows and we'll do whatever we have to do. It's just if this is a good tour, we can make a pretty good amount of money so we can make it work and go on support and play in front of a lot of people and hopefully sell some merch. That makes sense. Plus it's Michael Shanker, he's a legend. He was UFO fans from the very beginning, and we toured with Michael back in the 80s when he was McColley Shanker. We've done some shows actually in the last five to eight years with UFOs version of UFO, with Film Walling, of course. One of my favorite singers of all time. So, you know, it's just whatever makes sense. If it's a good tour, we can go out and play. We'll do well. Hey, Armored Saint kicks ass, we're going to go out and we're going to do our thing, and we're going to go out and play our best, and hopefully convince people who don't know us, and for all the fans, hopefully it'll be in Hog Heaven. But you know, there's no like negative perspective of trying to blow somebody away. Look, it's a competitive thing. I think deep down everybody wants to be the best they can be, but not in some kind of negative way. It's more like let's really elevate the show. That's kind of the perspective, but yeah, we're all honored to be playing with Michael, and like I said, he's going to be doing all of UFO stuff, which is going to be really amazing. I'm sure we'll be watching most of the shows every night, and you know, maybe he'll pull me up on stage and do one song. I'm hoping, at least somewhere, because I know him. Nice. Any chance that we'll hear even one of the new songs that you've been working on, or is that off the table until then? Yeah, I don't think so only because I know the label kind of frowns on it, because then it's released. And you know, these days with everything on YouTube, if you have something out there immediately, and I don't think so, but I mean, that's not going to be too long before the record comes out. And trust me, we're real proud of this album. I think we took another step level as far as songwriting goes.