Having spent nearly 40 years on the world metal stage and earning himself the title the Metal God, Rob Halford has released a collection of his solo work post Judas Priest. With such a large body of work from which to choose, it was hard to whittle it down to a single CD.

"I think what we tried to do was get a pretty broad base collection of some of my favourite songs, just to show the breadth of ideas that came out from what I do with the Halford band and what I've done with the Fight band in the past.

"It's always a bit of a nightmare because you look at the list and then you go 'oh, maybe we can put this on, and put this on', but I think the purpose it serves is just to keep everybody focused on all of my solo activities from the past and some ideas that I might be having for the future. That's why we put the two new Halford tracks, "Forgotten Generation" and "Drop Out" on there, just to let everybody know that part of my world is still active, and even though it's on the back-burner since I got back to Priest, I still get a great deal of pleasure out of those solo adventures.

"It is difficult [to choose songs], but I look at the list and I'm pretty pleased with what we've got."

His work with 2wo, a collaboration with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, should reach the light of day on Essentials Vol 2, as well as some material not included on Vol 1.

"A lot of people have asked me why none of the 2wo songs were on this release … It was just an unusual record for me to do because it wasn't what we'd call a pure metal release and I was kind of undecided about whether to include that material or not, but then I get all this feedback saying 'well, what about this and that track from the 2wo band!', so we'll probably include some of that stuff on Vol 2, whenever that comes out."

The best-of album was released under Halford's own label, MetalGod Entertainment, a company he created for the purpose of getting MetalGod Essentials out into the world.

"That came out of the blue really. Record companies are still very valuable you know, with Priest it was Sony/BMG and we need a label like that to look after us, but depending on where you're coming from and what you're setting out to achieve, everybody kind of finds the best place for themselves.

"After many, many emails and phone chats with people in the business I thought 'sod it, I think I'm gonna do it myself', so that's how the idea came around. It's great really because you're able to control everything, and as much as you coordinate with labels to do that sometimes the ball gets dropped and things get overlooked or whatever. So yeah we put this thing MetalGod Entertainment Records together and I never knew I'd have a record company this far on in the game, but I do and it's really exciting."

Not satisfied with only releasing his own music on his new record label, Halford also has plans to use his reputation and influence to help other bands.

"Metal is still as strong as it ever was, I mean I've been in the business almost 40 years and it's been a sensational experience, and I'm afforded a lot of respect from all quarters of the metal world and that makes me think about how I can use that and keep the fire alive in metal and maybe at some point in the future bring in other metal acts. That's just another opportunity to look forward to a little bit further on."

Prompted as to what new bands are on his radar and piquing his interest, Halford had some kind words to say about some underground bands he's been getting into lately and gave his thoughts on underground music and mainstream success.

"Oh yeah there's tons of them. There's a cool little underground band here in America called Pelican ... I get all their stuff off iTunes and put them on my laptop and burn them to CDs. I like the bands that are kind of mixing up what I call 'traditional classic metal' with their own ideas, bands like 3 Inches of Blood from up in Vancouver ... and there's a band called The Red Chord that I really like. I'm always noodling looking in MySpace and my mates are calling me and so on and so forth, so it's just like a gold mine really, just hunting for the treasures in metal.

"It's exciting when you find something that hasn't quite hit the mainstream situation. Things tend to change when you get mainstream, it can affect a band quite a lot and that's when sometimes problems can arise. When you're living in your own tight little world and you're doing your clubs and your pubs and whatever and you have an underground following, that's a great feeling. Then once you go mainstream and the issue of success and money and everything comes into it, sometimes the focus gets changed a bit and that can be quite sad. But yeah ... I'm all over the place checking out new stuff."

With a song of the same name, unfortunately not on Essentials Vol. 1, Halford went on to discuss the world of independent music in the "Cyber World".

"I come from a generation without any internet, one television station in the UK, the BBC, and no commercial radio or anything like that. So it's been absolutely brilliant to see how it's exploded over the decades and right now more than ever the consumer, and I include myself in that, is in control. You're not really dictated to now, your tastes are not steered for you by radio or by record companies. You're able to sit at home on your internet or whatever and just figure it out for yourself and go and look for what you need, so it's definitely a different world. And it does provide a band the opportunity, like I said before, take something like MySpace or even setting up your own website, it's dead easy to do. I always encourage bands to do that because that's just an amazing phenomenon that you can be sitting on the internet 24 hours a day seven days a week and you just don't know who's listening to you. You don't know where you're gonna get an email from or when a phone call might come to kind of encourage you and make the next step forward."

This, however, does not exclude bands from good old traditional blood sweat and tears.

"I mean you still have to do the slog, it's very important to do live work, you can't just live in the cyber world, you've got to get out there and play. You have to back up what you've recorded and so forth with a live physical performance. And I think all bands that become popular do that with that merit. You know, your music is important, but it's not everything, you've gotta get up on stage and sweat and make a noise."

As someone who has worked in the industry for so many years and has such wide range of projects and work that can be attributed to him, Halford often finds that the fans dictate what areas of his work ring out as those which hold a lot of importance and pride for him.

"I put 1000% in everything I do, and I look back at all those hundreds and hundreds of songs that I've made with Priest and in my solo activities and I have a lot of affection for everything that I've created. But obviously, I think what happens is when certain records or certain songs get really embraced by the public and they go in the charts or you get a lot of reaction from the fans when you're playing live, obviously songs pop out. In Priest obviously it's the classic things like "Breaking the Law", "Living After Midnight", "Another Thing Coming", "Electric Eye" and probably loads of others I can't think of right now, and it's the same with my solo career.

"I love a lot of the stuff from the first Fight record War of Words, that still resonates with me and it's a mood thing as well from my own perspective. The fans generally tend to put the spotlight on places that you may never even think about but at the end of the day, like I said, it's just really committing yourself to absolutely everything that you release."

Continuing to talk about the scale of his career, what he has achieved and what he has left to prove, Halford spoke fondly of a scene that he has helped forge and how he keeps himself motivated and inspired.

"Well that's what I love about music you know? I mean there's only so many notes in music ... I think the same question could be directed to famous painters or book writers. Really it has to come from you. Sometimes the well dries up but I think that's only from your own mental state. You can never stop. I think once you start thinking about stopping you go into retirement mode and I'm far from that, I'm still very excited and very active with what's going on around in metal in 2007. That's the inspiration for me, because the movement is so strong, and the fan base is so solid, those are parts of the driving force that keeps you motivated and keeps you going.

"I get excited. We have Metal Mania on VH1 Classic here nearly every night in the week which is a joy to watch from 9:00 till midnight and I've always got that playing on the telly in the background or put it on the DVR and fast forward through the fucking commercial breaks. But like I said I'm just happy to be part of the metal scene in general worldwide and I count my blessings really because there's a lot of tragedies in the music business, both fatal and otherwise. I like to keep it simple quite honestly, I love to listen to new bands, I love to listen to metal and that just keeps me fired up."

Having rejoined the band he is most well known for, Judas Priest a few years ago, I had wondered if coming back into the band after them spending time with Tim "Ripper" Owens on vocals in his absence was a hard adjustment to make.

"Not really, no, because we'd already spent over 20 years of our lives together and we've always kind of looked back at that and thought 'well, god we were out of each others' company for over 10 years and yet when we actually reunited in the writing, recording, performing sense it just seemed like that decade had evaporated'. It's very, very strange really, but again, it's all about what you have previously achieved, the memories you have together, it's like family. I mean sometimes families are out of touch for periods of time but you're still family and you still come together. So it was a very easy transition, I think we were all just excited to be back in each other's company again because we knew what great things we had achieved in the past and what we were able to pursue for the future."

A future that looks bright for Judas Priest with an epic concept album on the horizon and plans for a long overdue trek to Australian shores.

"Yeah, we were talking about that. We have weekly get-togethers while we're in the studio and I just come back form working in Brum in the [English] Midlands. I was over there for a month finishing all my vocal work for Nostradamus, it's coming out next year, and we talked about places we want to come back to or places we've not yet visited. Of course Australia was definitely there, and we know there's a massive metal following. We thank all the fans for supporting us and we look forward to coming back there, and as soon as we get the dates confirmed we'll stick them on JudasPriest.com and the same with the Halford stuff, RobHalford.com for keeping up to speed and all those kinds of things."

MetalGod Essentials Vol. 1 is available now through Riot Entertainment.