JUDAS PRIEST singer Rob Halford and bassist Ian Hill have joined the Steel Wings Foundation — the Ukraine-based heavy metal non-profit founded by YouTuber Metal Pilgrim — for a new fundraising campaign supporting the organisation's work on the ground in Ukraine.
Halford has handed over a set of personal items for the campaign. Among them are bracelets he has worn, a cross he has worn, and "Faithkeepers" tour picks packaged with Icons that Halford placed into the packages himself.
The centrepiece is different from all of it: a bracelet Halford made by hand. There is exactly one in existence, it is not going into any draw, and it goes to whoever makes the single biggest donation of the campaign.
Everything else works on donation weight. Every 1 UAH given equals one chance to win one of the Halford items — a 100 UAH donation (roughly $2.25) is 100 chances, a 1,000 UAH donation (roughly $22.50) is 1,000 chances. Fans can donate and enter at metalpilgrim.net/donate.
Halford and Hill also recorded a video message calling on the metal community to get involved. It sits inside Metal Pilgrim's latest video, roughly six minutes in:
This is the second time PRIEST and Steel Wings have worked together. The 2024 campaign raised 1,000,000 UAH — around $22,500 at the time — with Halford putting up a pair of his sunglasses and guitar picks accompanied by Icons. The foundation works on the ground here, using the international metal community to raise money and get help to people who need it.
Halford has never pretended metal and politics live in separate rooms, though he tends to keep the politics under the surface of the songs. Asked by a Metal Hammer reader six years ago whether politics belong in metal, he answered that they absolutely do, and that he had been putting his own into PRIEST's music for most of his life — "but it's concealed by smoke and mirrors."
"Take a song like 'Evil Never Dies' [from 2018's 'Firepower' album]. I make some digs there and I know what I mean, but here's the thing, especially for a band like PRIEST: music is about escapism," he said at the time. "To me there's a place for politics and I applaud bands that make it important in what they do, but with me the clues are there if you want to look for them."
With Steel Wings there are no clues to look for. It is a metal singer emptying out his own jewellery box for a country at war, for the second time.