Judas Priest, “Invincible Shield.”

Pressing play on Judas Priest’s 19th album, Invincible Shield, is like a time machine with a direct pathway to the late ’70s. The guitars are loud, the drums rumble the ground and heavy metal bombast stretches larger than life itself.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members haven’t broken their stride on the band’s first album of new material in six years.

It’s as good as anything Judas Priest has done in decades, yet there’s a youthful vitality that shines for a band in the midst of its fifth decade in the music business.

All the hallmarks of old-school heavy metal are here, from the driving riffs to the dueling guitar solos and vocalist Rob Halford’s supreme high notes. It doesn’t always work this way. There’s a precision and presence required of the genre, that the band seems to have no shortage of it on its first album since 2018’s Firepower. While some of the ingredients of the stew harken back to metal’s early days, there’s brightness to the production by guitarist and producer Andy Sneap that pushes it forward.

Rob Halford sounds ferocious and comes right out the gate firing on all cylinders on explosive opening track “Panic Attack.” The bass drum attack by Scott Travis adds to the energy as guitarists Richie Faulkner and Glenn Tipton trade lightspeed riffs back and forth. It’s the definition of the sound that foisted Judas Priest to sell more than 50 million albums. Halford brings it all together with screams that are believable, energetic and true to the band’s sound.

“The Serpent and the King” has some crossover with U.K. metal contemporaries. There are some tasty diversions along the way when the band flips the script, mixing in some half-speed breakdowns or spacey atmospheric interludes.

“When good and evil go to war/ We leave it up fate,” Halford snarls.

The title track adds some complexity into the mix with its shifts and rollercoaster of aural ups and downs. Faulkner’s guitar solo is a standout here as he lays down a mind-bending fretboard exploration.

While the songs have very little commonality, it’s hard not to recall Metallica’s “Frantic” as Halford adds heavy enunciation—”fran-tic-tic-tic”—his voice trailing off into the music on “Devil in Disguise.” The hard-driving “Gates of Hell” keeps the rock rolling, but in a different way. It trades heavy metal brutality for a soaring anthemic quality, leaning more toward melodic classic rock.

An extended guitar-laden intro builds up the drama on “Crown of Horns,” though the track actually crescendos in an unexpected place. One of the most melodic songs on the record, it’s decidedly more mid-tempo hard rock, with Halford’s vocals again impressive. Any concerns from the heavier music fans are quickly alleviated on end-of-days anthem “As God As My Witness,” one of the fastest and most aggressive songs on Invincible Shield.

“Trial By Fire” brings a more modern sound; you can hear a bit of Avenged Sevenfold crossover here, even though A7x  likely grew up listening to plenty of Judas Priest first. The band closes out with prog metal opus “Giants in the Sky,” a sprawling and majestic five-minute track that takes things home on a high note.

Follow writer Mike DeWald at Twitter.com/mike_dewald.