Richie Faulkner doesn’t mind if fans call Elegant Weapons a supergroup

Guitarist Richie Faulkner of Judas Priest discussed his side band, Elegant Weapons, which will release its sophomore album “Evolution” on Exciter Records on April 24, 2026, in a recent interview with Charlie Kendall’s Metalshop, as per Blabbermouth. In reference to his earlier description of Elegant Weapons as “a mix of Jimi Hendrix, Priest, [Black] Sabbath, solo Ozzy [Osbourne] and Black Label Society,” Richie stated this.

I’m not alone in saying that I’ve been influenced by Hendrix and Sabbath in a big way. But there’s a lot of people out there that aren’t guitar players that are influenced by Hendrix, and a lot of guitar players that are, obviously. I’m one of them. And I think Elegant Weapons’ music is a little bit more tuned into Hendrix’s style than Priest is. It’s got a few more obvious Hendrix links to it. So I’m fortunate that I can explore those avenues outside of Priest in Elegant Weapons. I get a free rein to go and do some other stuff and explore that part of my DNA as well.

Richie, drummer Christopher Williams (Accept), bassist Dave Rimmer (Uriah Heep), and vocalist Ronnie Romero (Rainbow, MSG) make up the powerful roster of Elegant Weapons. When asked if the phrase “supergroup,” which has been used to characterize Elegant Weapons’ lineup, is “a burden or an asset,” Richie responded as follows.

I think it’s lucky, really, that anyone’s referring to us with any kind of name. We’re fortunate that we’re playing music and people are listening and calling it anything. I’ll take supergroup. I’ll take whatever people wanna call it. If people are listening and giving us the time of day, and if people wanna call it a supergroup, then so be it.

Elegant Weapons, according to Faulkner, is a legitimate band and not a transient endeavor.

The first record, I put the album together and got the band together, and it was never intended to be a one-off, it was meant to be the start of a journey, so to speak. There was meant to be more albums, some tours, live playing. I wanted to start a band like Priest that starts from nothing and grows into something and hopefully continues into the future. We are on the second record now, so it’s not a one-and-done deal. We’re on our way now, and this one is an evolution in many senses of the word of the band and of the music that we create.

Obviously, Priest is the mothership — that’s the behemoth that we’ve gotta work around, and the other guys are in their respective bands as well. Dave’s in Uriah Heep, Christopher’s in Accept, and Ronnie’s doing a lot of things as well. So we’ve gotta plan it around other bands, and that’s just the nature of the beast. We’ve got a window of opportunity now to release the record. I’m always looking for opportunities to write stuff and record stuff, and that’s just the nature of it. We’ve done another record, and we’re lucky enough to put it out. And then we’ve got a Priest tour later on in the year. That’s just the way it is, man. And we are lucky to be that busy at the moment.

Additionally, Faulkner discussed working with Romero, who was born in Chile but currently resides in Romania after spending several years in Madrid, Spain.

He’s amazing, I say this a lot: Ronnie’s a great singer. There’s great singers in the world, but Ronnie’s not just a great singer. He’s a performer. He’s a frontman. He’s great in the studio. He’s professional, and he’s a joy to work with. We produced him a bit more on this record. The first record he sung, we had the vocals there already and he just sang them, and it was a quick process. On this one, our producer, Andy Sneap, wanted to produce him a lot more. We had the vocal ideas and we started from the ground up. We were on a three-way Zoom like this, and Ronnie was in the studio in Europe, and we produced him from start to finish — different mics, different techniques, different words, change this, different melodies, different backing vocals. Let’s make this more Ronnie Romero and technically better produced, better recorded and better performances for the best result that we could get. And I think it was a really good thing we did that. It is more Ronnie Romero than the first record. He’s amazing. I can’t say enough about him.