Rock Hard: What really happened between Iced Earth and Judas Priest?
Jon Schaffer: Nothing more than what I revealed in my press releases. I wanted to mount a side-project in company with Tim after the recording of The Glorious Burden. We had finished the disk with Matthew and the result was not up to scratch. I went down to Florida to mix the album with Jim Morris and after about 3 days I said "Let's can this. The vocals are too rotten, there's no point in continuing".
To release The Glorious Burden with the voice of Matt would have been the beginning of the end for Iced Earth. And as this disk is the one that I'm the most proud of... During three days Jim Morris did everything: He experimented with all the options available in the software at our disposal to make Matt's voice sound decent ... But it was unrecoverable.
I returned to my home in Indiana, I saw Matt and I said that we must part, that it was out of the question to release the album like that. He was annoyed but I don't know why, since in December we had spoken and he had told me that he wanted to quit the group: I had dissuaded him because we had a new contract and it might have proved to have been a decision that he would regret for the rest of his life. He accepted to stay, down to loyalty and not because he heart told him to do so.
But already, during the recording, I felt that something was not going right with his singing. Several days after the eviction of Matt, my manager - who was up to date on my relations with Tim and with my desire to do a side-project - simply asked me to give him a call: at the time he was still in Judas Priest: it was merely a question of him recording the disc. As a guest. He came to my home to make the album five days later. And 48 hours later, we learnt that Rob was returning to Priest. This agreement was a coincidence, but I'd already seen the signs.
