Metal up your ass

I know, I know, I´m late again. The Judas Priest show in Jäähalli took place already a week ago but what are a couple of days compared to the incredible longevity of that lot of leather-lads. Formed 1699, er..1969 in Birmingham, England they have preached the word of heavy metal for over 40 years!

Now in 2012 the band was said to scream their last goodbye on JP´s Epitaph farewell tour. Lately it seems though that the Priest is far from demitting as the metal gods are writing new material, plan to record their 17th studio album AND tour, if only on a smaller scale than touring the world for two years. Maybe this is a first hint that the Mayan predictions about this year´s end of the world are not true at all.

Anyway, the show in Jäähalli was obviously designed to be their swansong and for two and a half hours we got a best-of program spiced with over-the-top bombast like changing back-drops, animated visuals, the trademark motorcycle bit, lasers and explosions!
Wham-bam, thank you, ma´am!

Pic by Arno Pokkari for Imperiumi.

The sound was quite good but it didn´t sit well with me that Richie Faulkner, new hotshot on second guitar and replacement for original member K.K. Downing, was so much louder than Glenn Tipton. Tipton is an absolutely underrated guitar player that helped shape the sound of heavy metal as we know it. Plus when it comes to soloing, he doesn´t need to hide behind all those new "shredders".

Rob Halford´s voice was strong and clear, the metal god presented himself in good shape. Only the very high notes, of which I´m not a huge fan anyway, seemed a bit ot of reach. Other than that - no complains. The setlist may not have pleased everyone, but that´s impossible if you have to cram 40 years into 2,5 hours. I enjoyed the gig very much, sometimes because it was so cool, all of the time because it was so corny.

Judas Priest is larger than life and the line between marvellous and unintentionally hilarious paper thin. They make use of almost every heavy metal cliché, just bare in mind that they invented or cultivated a big bunch of those chlichés themselves.

Pic by Arno Pokkari for Imperiumi.

When they launched into Starbreaker, the back-drop changed of course to the Sin After Sin cover with it´s temple pillars. Susu immediately screamed "Stonehenge" into my ear and I howled "Spinal Tap" back into hers. And guess what: the previous week YLE Teema had shown the Classic Albums episode for JP´s British Steel, in which Halford admits that when he saw the Spinal Tap movie for the first time, he thought it was a genuine documentary. He didn´t get the joke at all because everything that flick makes fun of was so close to his everyday life in his own band. Yeah!

Sing-a-long followed sing-a-long that night and songs like Metal Gods, Hellbent For Leather and Breaking The Law (no sing-a-long but a sing-it-yourself with Halford pointing his mic to the crowd) are nothing but all-time classics. The crowd favorite Turbolover will always make me smile because I have to imagine all these mustached, homophobic metal fans, yelling the chorus for 12 years until developing serious ablutomania in 1998, the year Halford came out of the closet. Ha ha!

To wrap things up I only gotta say that the whole spectacle turned out to be exactly THE heavy metal extravaganzy everyone had come for. Judas Priest proved that they can still deliver the goods 40 years after their foundation and corny or not - I´m looking forward to hearing the new material asap.

Make sure to check out:

Judas Priest 

Imperiumi 
(Finnish online metal magazine I "borrowed" the pics from.
There´s also a great review of that night. In Finnish, of course)