Judas Priest Takes Nostradamus on The Road

BW&BK sat down with JUDAS PRIEST guitarists Glenn Tipton and KK Downing recently to chat about the upcoming conceptual monster Nostradamus, due out via Columbia Records on Monday, June 16th in the UK/Europe, and a day later in North America on Epic Records. Both molten men discussed the possibilities of performing the album in its entirety on the road at some point in time in the future.

"We do want to perform it in its entirety next year at special venues around the world like Carnegie Hall (in Manhattan), the Royal Albert Hall (London), the Sydney Opera House (Sydney)," Tipton reveals. "If we can pull that off it will be very exciting. It's very ambitious - we'll need other musicians like backing vocalists for the choral sections, maybe a keyboard player or some sort of orchestration. Make the whole thing an event, not just a rock band with orchestration, but Nostradamus in his own character. If we can pull it off it will be very exciting. It's all based around his life story. Rather than his prophecies, the whole project is more about a guy from the 1500s who certainly left his mark. He was a special dude. Although he foresaw the plague, he couldn't save his wife and daughters, they died. And the church came after him which as inevitable - he got kicked out, exiled, then he found a new love and a new life. His life in itself was really interesting - that's what inspired us really. It really inspired us to go down paths we'd never gone down before, and couldn't have done on a normal Judas Priest album. But for some reason it's still a Judas Priest album. It's pretty awe-inspiring really. He foresaw it, he foretold it obviously."

Downing adds about the road-worthy nature of Nostradamus: "It's on our mind as well, the fact that some say we might be able to put on a fabulous production and perform the album in it's entirety, with some really cool visuals as a musical. That was always a possibility, not that it matters completely. What you get now is what you get to evaluate and not what might happen in the future. But this summer tour is going to be great. We'll be playing all the festivals in Europe and we have the Priest, HEAVEN & HELL and MOTÖRHEAD tour - we're pumped up about it. We'll be quite pacified by playing a coupla things from Nostradamus on that. We'll be playing some killer songs we haven't played in a long time, so the fans can go pretty wild over that. It's going to be a good world tour this year. A lot depends on how the record is perceived as to what we'll do in the future."

When asked if the band would be accompanied by orchestra, Downing comments: "It would be great initially to bring a fully-fledged orchestra with us, but for us to play a lot of the parts with the equipment we've got to do it, to showcase that would be good. In the Royal Albert Hall possibly, venues like that around the world. Whether it will happen or not, but it would be really good to film that. But we could also take it out on the road ourselves with a couple of really good keyboard players like Don Airey (DEEP PURPLE)."

In addition to the regular jewel case double CD version of Nostradamus, collectors will undoubtedly be interested in hunting down a copy of a Deluxe Double CD housed in a 48 page hard-bound book package. But that’s not all - a Super Deluxe Boxset version will also be available with triple vinyl, the double CD, an expanded booklet and a poster.

Nostradamus tracklisting:

‘Dawn Of Creation’ - ‘Prophecy’
‘Awakening’ - ‘Revelations’
‘The Four Horsemen’ - ‘War’
‘Sands Of Time’ - ‘estilence And Plague’
‘Death’
‘Peace’ - ‘Conquest’
‘Lost Love’
‘Persecution’
‘Solitude’ - ‘Exiled’
‘Alone’
‘Shadows In The Flame’ - ‘Visions’
‘Hope - New Beginnings’
‘Calm Before The Storm’ - ‘Nostradamus’
‘Future Of Mankind’

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