June 14th, the concert I have waited for so long, is finally going to happen. Judas Priest, the metal gods, are back in The Netherlands!
Once inside TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht, where everything is going to happen, bought a tour-shirt, found the right places, bought something to drink and it’s time to wait for the metal gods. On request of the band there is no support act, so they begin early. At 20:15 the background music fades away, the lights go out and War Pigs (yeah, the Black Sabbath song) is going to start, soon after that Rob Halford, Ian Hill, Glenn Tipton, Scott Travis and Richie Faulkner go on stage and the Priest is officially started in the fully packed venue.
Immediately when they started you could know that this evening will be great. While, with all respect, Rob Halford physically isn’t the most fittest anymore, the energy of his metal soul still is there. You can’t expect that he runs over the stage, but vocally he delivers surely a master job. What a vocal range has that man! The one that brings the most energy, physically, from the stage is guitarist Richie Faulkner. But hey, that’s not strange, because he is much younger than the other band members. Richie, K.K. Downing’s successor, moreover is doing his guitar duties in Judas Priest amazing.
The crowd tonight is mixed, a lot of people who could be Judas Priest fans from a very early moment, but also a lot of younger people. While the crowd is mixed the older, more known songs are more popular than songs from their latest album Redeemer of Souls this evening. While the crowd is going totally crazy with songs as Painkiller, Victim of Changes, Breaking The Law, Electric Eye and You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’, songs as March of the Damned and Redeemer of Souls are more difficult to reach the whole crowd.
Every Judas Priest fan knows that most times when they play Hell Bent for Leather, Halford will come on stage riding a Harley-Davidson. Before the show we thought that he is not going to do that, because of two things: a relatively small venue and it seems like there was no place to get that Harley-Davidson on stage. After a while, it was time, time for Hell Bent for Leather, Halford was gone from the stage, but he was back soon. Yeah, on that motorbike! So, apparently there was enough space.
After almost two hours the show is over and noticing the crowd (including myself) Judas Priest have done a great job! My personal highlights of the evening were Victim of Changes and Painkiller, but the rest of the evening was also amazing. This concert is definitely one of the best concerts I have ever seen.
Hail to the Metal Gods!
Hi!
I’m Tim van Velthuysen and I started DutchMetalManiac back in 2014. I’m 29 years old and I live in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Of course, I like metal, but I can also appreciate other musical styles.
In addition to DutchMetalManiac I also have a personal website on which I’ll post various things that won’t fit on DutchMetalManiac, but might be interesting for you as well. It’s in Dutch though.
