Richie Faulkner has never been short of things to do. Fifteen years into his tenure with Judas Priest, fresh off a studio stretch laying foundations for the band’s next record, and fresh off releasing Evolution, the second album from his hard rock outfit Elegant Weapons, the guitarist spoke with correspondent Rodrigo Altaf about how the project has grown from a pandemic-era creative outlet into something with a life of its own.
The title says it plainly enough. “The songs have evolved, there’s a side of the band which we’re kind of growing on this record that wasn’t on the first one,” Faulkner said. “Since 2023, we have been on the road, and we have gotten some new guys in the band. The band has evolved, the songs have evolved. We figured it was appropriate to call the album that as well.”
Those new members, bassist Davey Rimmer of Uriah Heep and drummer Christopher Williams, were already in Nashville shooting videos for the debut when Faulkner pulled them into the studio to start tracking what would become Evolution. The recording process itself shifted, too. Where the first album was pieced together more remotely, this one was built from a live drum session with all three players in the room together. “We captured the drum tracks and built that core. We put the guitars and bass on later, but we recorded the drum tracks together, which I think creates a spontaneous vibe,” Faulkner said. “If I do something on the guitar or Davey does something or Christopher does something, we all interact and capture that spontaneity.”
Vocalist Ronnie Romero was handled differently, too. Faulkner and producer Andy worked with him remotely via Zoom, building the vocal performances from scratch rather than handing him a template to replicate. “On the first record, the vocals were originally sung by another singer, so we gave them to Ronnie and said, ‘ Sing them like this. He did that, and they were phenomenal,” Faulkner said. “But on this one, we wanted more Ronnie. We wanted Andy especially to produce Ronnie more, to really get some more Ronnie Romero out of him. And I think it turned out better for doing that.”
The album covers considerable ground. “Shooting Shadows” rides a riff Faulkner compares to a Pantera verse before opening up into a melodic chorus, a contrast he was deliberate about. “I love melody. For me, it’s the song first and the melody,” he said. “I like the way it goes from really heavy in the verses to that melodic chorus. It was a good contrast.” “Generation Me” aims at social media’s echo chamber effect, something that landed close to home for Faulkner as the father of a six-year-old. “It seems like a lot of people these days think that the world revolves around them. They can build their own echo chamber in their own little sphere online,” he said. “Every generation has its thing. But it’s just the echo chamber that people can build that focuses on them and doesn’t let them think about anything else.”
“Keeper of the Keys,” featuring Adam Wakeman on keyboards, is one of Faulkner‘s personal highlights on the record. Built around a Rainbow and Deep Purple-influenced foundation, it grows from a sparse Hammond organ and vocal opening into a full jam that closes the album. “I wanted to put it earlier on in the record because I think it shows another side to the band, but I couldn’t put anything after it,” he said. “The way it ends and the way it builds up, it had to go at the end of the record.”
The most personal moment on Evolution is the instrumental “Rupture,” a track that draws directly from Faulkner‘s 2022 onstage aortic aneurysm. He was careful not to make it too literal or too personal, but the imagery that shaped it was vivid. “I could see someone in a hospital bed with machines around them, wires and tubes keeping them alive,” he said. “I could feel like turmoil in the music, but I could also hear strength and hope. And at the end, obviously, it flatlines. The heartbeat stops, and the person in the song flatlines, which obviously I didn’t do, fortunately.” The track flows directly into “Mercy of the Fallen,” which revisits the same emotional territory, the two songs working together as a pair. “For dramatic effect, it flatlines and then crashes in with ‘Mercy of the Fallen,’” he said. “I thought it was quite a cool dynamic to try out on a record.”
Two years and a steady run of live shows have done something for Elegant Weapons that no studio session could fully replicate. “It’s more than a COVID record, which I didn’t want it to be anyway,” Faulkner said. “Now it’s become more solidified. When you play live, you become closer as a band, and the songs take on a different form.” He’s been open about the longer-term thinking behind the project, too. With Judas Priest showing no signs of slowing down, having spent February in the studio working on new material and with summer European dates on the horizon, the immediate future is clear. But Faulkner has thought past that. “If one day Judas Priest decides to call it a day, maybe this band has built up enough of a foundation. We can take that DNA and carry that on,” he said. “We’re fortunate that we’re able to do this band as well as our other bands. We all feel very fortunate.”
Evolution was released on April 24.
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