HERRIMAN, Utah, April 11, 2025 (Gephardt Daily) — Bass player Paul — you can just call him Paulie Walnuts — remembers when he first heard the sound of the heavy metal band he now emulates as a member of High Priest Lv, coming to Herriman’s Redemption Bar & Grill on Saturday.
Local fan favorite, and Redemption regulars, MILF and Cookies, will be the warm-up band.
Click here for ticket information.
That iconic band, of course, was Judas Priest, the British metal group. Founded in 1969, it has sold more than 50 million albums, and is often ranked among the greatest metal bands of all time.
“It blew me away at 14 years old, and I’ve been a Judas Priest fan ever since,” he told Gephardt Daily. “That was before music videos came out, and they were just amazing.”
Paul said the early period of Judas Priest was raw, high energy and amazing. And the band’s sound was like no one else’s.
“It was a totally different sound from what was out there,” he said. “You have Black Sabbath and everything, but Judas Priest had the two-guitar attack that no other band had at the time.”
High Priest Lv, which just celebrated its second anniversary, also has two guitarists among its five members, and prides itself on capturing the musical style of Judas Priest as it performs the bands’ early-period hits.
“Their earliest stuff is so much better than the commercial stuff they did later, before MTV ruined them,” Paul said. “That’s what we mainly concentrate on. We do some of their newest stuff, too.”
Paul’s admiration for the band’s early era has never faded, he said. He has played in many bands over his lifetime, usually supporting the habit with a full-time job. Paul worked for years in sanitation in New York City. After retiring, he moved west, and now drives a tour bus in the Grand Canyon a few days a week.
It’s a job he has held for about a decade.
“It was cool at first,” he said, laughing. “Now it’s a job. At first it was like, ‘Yeah, I’m at the Grand Canyon every day.’ Now it’s like, ‘Yeah, I’m at the Grand Canyon every day.'”
OK, maybe you had to be there to catch his subtle tone shift.
Everyone in High Priest Lv is a passionate musician with a bill-paying day job.
“One of our guitarists, Marc, he’s an accountant, and our other guitarist is a bartender. Our singer is a Latin teacher in high school.”
Several, including Paul, also play with additional Las Vegas area band. Paul plays with Smashing Alice.
All the hard work is worth it, he said, adding that even his mother, who still lives in the northeast, seems to approve of his High Priest Lv gig.
“She watches the videos,” Paul said. “She sat in the crowd one time, just sat there and gave me the finger the whole night because it was too loud, my mom thought.”
Wait, really?
“Yeah. But that’s just my mom.”
High Priest Lv plays Redemption at 9 p.m. Saturday, April 12. Doors open at 8. The bar, a 21+ venue, is at 3517 W. Maradona Drive, Herriman.
Redemption Bar & Grill is a proud sponsor of Gephardt Daily and supporter of independent local journalism in Utah.
