Even the best ones happen to record a weak album. The good thing with Judas Priest is that they have released worse ones than this. The important thing is that they are here in iron line-up and on live shows they play older songs. Why the album is bad? For some reasons. First, it is more suitable for a young, still aspiring metal band but not for a living legend of heavy metal. Second, Judas have fallen in the trap of the clichéd conceptual metal albums – on paper there are 23 songs, in actual most of them are preludes and interludes. Third, the theme is being unraveled long ago by metal bands yet so much mid temp pathos does not fit the life of the prophet-apothecary. And fourth and most important, this is Judas Priest, God damn it! They are the band that wrote huge part of the history of heavy metal. Their songs are sung by multi-thousand crowds, becoming hymns for the metal fans in the world. Their power is in creating of strong pieces that will blow you from headbanging and singing along. And with their previous album “Angel of Retribution” they proved that they still are very good on this. That is why it is kind of unnecessary after 15 albums that forged if not the foundations at least the slates of every single floor in the metal, to record 100 minutes of mid tempo metal plays. It is not that “Nostradamus” will disappoint the fans, I an sure that many of them like it and also that this is an experiment, a record after which Judas Priest will continue with full force. Only the meaning and the need of such a release are getting lost. And lets face it, not everybody could turn even the short transitions between the songs in a conceptual album to small musical pearls like Blind Guardian did 10 years ago with “Nightfall in Middle-Earth”. Rob Halford and co. Are good in the pure, strong and straight heavy metal or rock. That is way their true face looks behind the epic “Revelations”, the rhythmic “Persecution” and the melodic “Visions”. „Alone” is a great metal ballad with a killing chorus, that reminds at the same time of the strongest years of the British and for their peaks with Tim Owens. These songs and the title “Nostradamus” which is a classic chainsaw ala Judas Priest and the typical uncompromising sound of the band, are trumps that hint that it is too early for these classics to retire. Despite the other around 15 fillings and ugly cover art.