judas priest

Better late than never. It took me a while to finally listen to Judas Priest's recent live album release, A Touch of Evil — Live. Unleashed in the East is one of my favorite live albums and the other Priest live album (with vocalist Rob Halford), 1987's Priest ... Live!, is, quite possibly,my least favorite. (I don't count the two live albums Priest made with Ripper Owens.) So, any new Priest live disc put in front of me is not met with a lot of enthusiasm.

To my knowledge there has never been a definitive Judas Priest biography. The fact that this 2009 biography was written by a self-proclaimed Priest fan gave me some hope.

However, all hope was gone by the middle of the first chapter. Author Brian Bowe would not be delivering the goods.

There are interesting tidbits here and there but not enough to entice any serious Priest fan. Heavily footnoted, there are no revelations inside the book. And, unfortunately, there are no interviews given directly to the author.

Whitesnake were special guests to Judas Priest this Independence Day weekend in Connecticut, and both are Brit bands that had fully embraced the hard rock/heavy metal way of American rock in the 80s while remaining distinctively British. Mr. Whitesnake himself, vocalist David Coverdale, joked that was torn between really celebrating the 4th of July holiday or "crying in his beer."