In an interview with Reverb.com in November 2015, Richie Faulkner said that Judas Priest would start work on a new album in 2016. In April 2016, Loudwire posted a photo showing Rob Halford, Glenn Tipton and Faulkner himself in the studio, with Halford stating in a radio interview that the album would be ready by early 2017. In an interview Halford expressed dissatisfaction on making a Redeemer of Souls part two: "I think it's very important that we make another stand alone record again, a heavy metal record that's going to have its own legs and just be as different as all of them have been so far." He describes the album as "some of our best work — without a doubt", praising Faulkner for his contributions.
Drummer Scott Travis says that it was "a little bit of both" of a conscious effort to revisit some of the band's musical past organically and naturally, expressing uncertainty in terms of the writings of the guitar riffs. He cites the songs "Rising from Ruins", "Lone Wolf", "Evil Never Dies" and "Never the Heroes" as his favourite songs. He then went on to say that the production is an improvement over Redeemer of Souls.
Both Faulkner and Travis agree that Firepower is a heavier album than Redeemer of Souls, with Faulkner saying that the title track "might be the fastest Priest song. Especially in terms of the drum approach. A friend of mine, he said it sounds like 'Painkiller', but faster. So I can't think of another song that's quicker than 'Painkiller'. So if you define heavy in terms of speed, it's a pretty heavy track, it's pretty full-on."
Halford explained how the album's title came to be, describing it as "the fire and the power of heavy metal music", later bringing up the band's other titles such as Screaming for Vengeance, Defenders of the Faith, British Steel and Sad Wings of Destiny, "They all sound great, don't they? They got to have some strength and conviction in the statement that Firepower certainly does."
Firepower was recorded from March to June 2017 at Backstage Recording Studios in Derbyshire.
The songwriting process was "free and really relaxed", as explained by Faulkner.
Faulkner says that the writing and recording ideas from Redeemer of Souls were the same, but was slightly different when it came to his guitar performance. He also said that it wasn't a conscious thing on his part to revisit the band's past albums for inspiration.
Faulkner explained that some of the melodies and the ideas for Firepower were already written a long time ago. He says that the songs "Rising From Ruins", "Evil Never Dies" and "Sea of Red" are his favourites. When asked why Allom and Sneap were chosen to produce the album, he said, "We were kicking around producer’s names at the beginning of the process and that was one of the things that we wanted to do differently compared to Redeemer of Souls. One of the things that we could refine was the production and when we were talking about producers different names came up like Tom Allom, as he had already worked with the band on some of the classic albums, and Andy Sneap being a more modern metal producer of which we really liked the sound. So when we were discussing these two names, someone came up with the idea to combine forces and let them both do the production job. It was one of those lightbulb-moments, because it was never been done before with Priest but it just worked out great. It could have gone horribly wrong with clashing egos and things like that, but it was a great marriage of a classic producer and a more modern producer. They were really instrumental in getting the sound and the energy right for Firepower and I think that they did a fantastic job."
Shortly after the announcement that Glenn Tipton was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease on 12 February 2018, former guitarist K.K. Downing issued a statement saying that he was "shocked and stunned" that he wasn't asked to rejoin the band to replace Tipton. He then insinuated that Sneap's contributions were more than being just a producer, given the idea that he covered Tipton's guitar parts and not Tipton himself. Halford and Faulkner responded negatively. Downing later clarified that he only meant to say that Sneap not only produced, but likely "contributed song ideas, riffs and licks, lyric ideas etc."
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