Judas Priest Explain Nostradamus

Even Nostradamus couldn't have predicted that in 2008 Judas Priest, the band responsible for such classic metal anthems as "Breaking The Law" and "Hell Bent For Leather" would write a heavy metal opera about his life. But that's exactly what they did, and on June of 2008, Nostradamus hit the record shelves... all 102 minutes of it. Although reactions have been mixed, a record of this magnitude might not set in until after weeks or even months of listening. Singer Rob Halford agrees that this kind of endeavor might fly over some people's heads.

"I think for something like Nostradamus, it is an enormous amount of information," Halford says. "It's a double CD at an hour-and-40 minutes and I think anything like this has to be looked upon differently as opposed to what you call a 'studio release.'

"A studio release is just a bunch of songs with different ideas, different messages, different tempos and so forth. With a concept record it's got a life of its own. It has to be pulled away with everything else you've done previously, and so that's the case with this release. It's still early days. I think it's got a long, long way to go before it reaches any point of understanding, so to speak."

Judas Priest have already made their mark in the annals on not only metal, but also in music history. They're credited with ushering in the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal and for perfecting the big arena rock show. After more than 30 years of making straight-forward, hard rocking music, it seems like a strange move to suddenly drastically change the direction of the band and get all conceptual.

"I don't think it's that drastic," Halford says. "I think we've just been progressing along as we've been doing for the last three decades. We've been writing and making metal since 1970 and we don't really have a set agenda. All we know is we get pleasure out of sitting down together, primarily as a trio of myself Glenn [Tipton] and K.K. [Downing]. We just have the best of times seeing what we can come up with in our writing sessions. After those writing sessions we've written hundreds and hundreds of metal tunes. We've reached well past double digits of releases.

"People are saying that this is very ambitious, it's a risk, it's drastic and we don't understand that reaction. Quite frankly, it just seems a little bit strange. I suppose in today's world to do something like this in metal is viewed as being somewhat different. If that's the case, so be it, we'll take that reaction because it's certainly bringing an incredible amount of focus to the band and everything in our career — not just Nostradamus, but it's like Priest is back under the microscope again."

All criticisms aside, Nostradamus has been praised by some as a daring and eclectic masterpiece. No matter how much they've been scorned and how much controversy they've faced, Priest continue to be one of the world's most beloved metal bands in the world.

"We have this incredible fan base that's with us wherever we go in the world," says Halford. "We just did a very successful European tour headlining most of the festivals and doing a number of our own headlining days, which was a real success.

"We just had a great time in Canada and we're playing to 10,000-plus tonight in Kansas City, so those are people that support us and those are the people that have a real understanding of what we're going through."