JUDAS PRIEST: Nostradamus

Produced by Glenn Tipton and KK Downing

Released: 2008

I can hardly believe this was possible, but I was halfway through listening to this dinosaur of an album and I was struggling to find good things to say about it! How could this be so? I mean, this is Judas fucking Priest we're talking about here! It couldn't really be that bad, could it? So why do I feel cheated (and I shouldn't really, because I got this album for free)? Well, there's actually a few reasons, but perhaps the chief one is that, in attempting a concept album at the twilight of their career, Judas Priest has over-reached. Not content with just a concept album, the godfathers of metal had to go and make a massively overblown and pretentious one that's a staggering 103 minutes long. Even that would have been acceptable if it could engage you for that long, but Nostradamus simply doesn't do that.

Ignoring the power metal-like intro, we can skip to "Prophecy", which opens things in a suitably headbanging Priest fashion and things are going along all right until the "I am Nostradamus!" line almost made me burst into laughter. Still, it isn't a bad track even with the cheesy bits in the middle. After this however, the first half of Nostradamus is rather devoid of highlights. "War" sounds vaguely like a Wagnerian opera piece but doesn't really hold the listener's attention the way such a thing should apart from the grand orchestral section in the middle. The next track is equally unspectacular, plodding along at the same mid tempo. The pondering riff and Halford's sinister vocal give "Death" an appropriate feel, but it's at least two minutes too long and Tipton's jagged soloing comes in way too late. Indeed, guitar solos are pretty thin on the ground, something I thought I'd never say about a Judas Priest album. Then along comes "Persecution", and if you hadn't have had to wait 50 minutes for it you could almost forgive them. This one is classic Priest: catchy, fast and bone-crushing heavy metal. If only the rest of it could have been like this.

But it isn't, as part two opens with "Exiled", another track that just trundles along without reaching any heights, something that virtually the whole of the second CD is guilty of. "Alone" is the perfect embodiment of the entire volume: bloated. Halford hits some of the best notes he's hit in years on this one but the track just loses its way with an acoustic part in the middle for some reason that goes nowhere. "Visions" seems to drag on and on without end and "New Beginnings" is one of those overwrought ballads you usually find on a second-rate European power metal album. I couldn't even listen to it all the way through. To say by this time I was disappointed -- bored even -- would be a considerable understatement.

Then, as they always do, Judas Priest finds a way to redeem themselves. The title track starts out with a little operatic section before suddenly ripping your face off the way "Painkiller" did, and sounds rather like a reworking of that song in fact. "Future of Mankind" follows in much the same fashion, classic metal hammering with Downing and Tipton finally letting loose with some sorely-missed lead work. This is the longest track on the album but it seems like one of the shortest and again I find myself asking why all of Nostradamus couldn't have been like this.

With the fat trimmed off and a punchier production, Nostradamus could have been a really good album, but there's too many turgid tracks, too many pointless interludes that break the flow, and for an album supposedly about the life of Nostradamus, it doesn't actually tell you that much about him. Take tracks 1 to 5, plus "Persecution" and the last two songs on the second CD and you've got a decent Judas Priest album. Add the rest, and it's a huge, boring, unwieldly behemoth. Sad.

CD 1:

1. Dawn of Creation/Prophecy
2. Awakening/Revelation
3. The Four Horsemen/War
4. Pestilence and Plague
5. Death
6. Peace/Conquest
7. Lost Love
8. Persecution

CD 2:

1. Solitude/Exiled
2. Alone
3. Shadows in the Flame/Visions
4. Hope/New Beginnings
5. Calm Before the Storm/Nostradamus
6. Future of Mankind

Rating: 55%