Singer Rob Halford of British heavy metal legends JUDAS PRIEST, who are celebrating their 50th anniversary, spoke to The Virginian-Pilot about the band's longevity. "I think anything of quality sustains itself," he said. "Right from those early kinds of ground shakers — how far can I think back? — 'United', 'Take On The World', 'Evening Star', anything from that point on where you make that connection and it starts to stick and that is also your motivation to keep making music at a very high standard. We've never approached our albums as it being about one song serving as a radio track and the rest is filler. … Good stuff lasts forever." He added: "PRIEST is part of the fabric of music in American culture now. We have been for a long time. The longer you're around, the more that has substance attached to it. We're this heavy metal time machine and can take you back to the 1970s and literally walk through the decades together through the performances that we make now. …We want to give our fans the best experience we can." JUDAS PRIEST's first pandemic-era tour, the rescheduled "50 Heavy Metal Years" North American trek, will kick off on September 8 in Reading, Pennsylvania and conclude on November 5 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. JUDAS PRIEST played its first concert in more than two years on August 15 at the Bloodstock Open Air festival, which took place at Catton Park, Walton-on-Trent, United Kingdom. The band pulled out a number of surprises in its set, including first-ever performances of "One Shot At Glory" and "Invader", as well as several tracks that hadn't been played in a long time, such as "Rocka Rolla (performed for the first time since 1976), "Exciter" (first time since 2005), "Hell Patrol" (first time since 2009), "A Touch Of Evil" (first time since 2005), "Dissident Aggressor" (first time since 2009) and "Blood Red Skies" (first time since 2012). In early April, JUDAS PRIEST's European tour, which was scheduled to kick off in late May, was once again postponed due to "ongoing COVID-19 vaccine issues." The trek will now run from May 27, 2022 in Moscow, Russia until July 31, 2022 in Oberhausen, Germany.
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