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› Judas Priest - Nostradamus
I am Nostradamus! Well, I’m not – I’m actually HeadBang’s resident folk metal nut branching out a little bit – but Rob Halford is, according to the opening track of this monster, and what a monster it is. At twenty-three tracks long and a concept album to boot, there was never going to be any middle ground with this, but is it a masterpiece – Priest’s magnum opus – or just a (large) pile of self-indulgent tosh? I set off to find out…
Disc One, known just a touch pretentiously as “Act One”, starts off in a very odd fashion with Dawn of Creation – when exactly did Priest get all ethereal and New Age on us? A vaguely menacing introduction that eventually plunges into the all-out infectiousness of Prophecy, with a killer hook that just about covers up the slight straining of Halford’s voice in places. A spoken verse in the middle sounds like a cross between classic Dr Who and something out of Rocky Horror, while the extended solo owes perhaps a little too much to Steve Vai.
This is followed by Awakening, which despite being just fifty three seconds long, is a seriously weak track. Halford is obviously struggling, and is painfully flat throughout it, and then there are the opening chords that Metallica could probably claim royalties for. There’s borrowing, then there’s wholesale intro theft. Awakening leads into Revelations, the first half of which has a bassline and principal chords straight from Michael Jackson’s Greatest Hits – not a bad thing, but the continued borrowing makes Nostradamus feel rather like a compilation album. The second half of Revelations is better, but by the time you’ve recognised that repeated staccato chord from Billie-Jean, the track’s nearly over.
The Four Horsemen pushes the quality right up. An atmospheric little track introducing War, where Halford moves back down into his comfort zone for a dark, apocalyptic number that is the first track on the album that doesn’t remind me forcibly of anyone else. Conjuring up Tim Burtonesque images of the horsemen of the intro, you have to wonder why a track of this calibre wasn’t the opener.
I’d love to say the album continues at this standard, growling its way through the murky history of the title character, but Sands of Time is another weak introductory track, only becoming coherent as it morphs into Plague and Pestilence, which is a bit more bloody like it. Original and interesting without pushing Halford enough that the vocals suffer, the bassline is pervasive and the guitar solo is the first really good one on the album. A sense of occasion and scale really starts to come across here, and not a moment before time. Death opens eerily with a church bell and half-heard voices before becoming a slow, disjointed lesson in building atmosphere that sounds very much as though it shouldn’t work. It does, but the guitar work towards the end is strangely incongruous and sounds as if it belongs to a different track.
Peace proves that Judas Priest can do slow and melancholic very well when Halford’s kept within his range. The first interlude that really works as such, it provides a sort of palate-cleanser between the eerie power of Death and the victorious – almost bouncy – sound of Conquest. From here it’s one hell of a leap to a love song that sounds like something from an X Factor winner, but that’s pretty much what Lost Love is. I kept waiting for the explosion of drums and guitar that usually happens about halfway into such maudlin songs on albums of this ilk, but no cigar. Very pretty, but difficult to take seriously from the Brummie bloke who was calling himself Nostradamus a few tracks back. Then, oddly, Persecution carries on as if Lost Love never happened, and after a genuinely creepy intro, promptly turns into one of the best tracks of Act One. Epic, bass-driven and effortlessly coherent, this deserves to be a truly classic live track.
Act Two
Solitude is in much the same vein as Dawn of Creation – ethereal, floaty and a bit pointless with delusions of atmosphere. It doesn’t quite lead into Exiled as smoothly as it could do, which is probably because Exiled is a far better track with a genuine and fitting sense of drama. Alone, by contrast, is a brooding track that never quite comes together despite a mildly catchy hook and some impressive if slightly uncontrolled falsetto. Maybe the dragging pace is intended to emphasise being alone, but it just makes Alone a rather dull track.
Shadows of the Flame>/b> begins more promisingly, with some unexpected but not unwelcome acoustic guitar and a nice – but again, vocally strained – little vignette that leads almost flawlessly into Visions, which is very nearly on a par with Prophecy for sheer singability. Another one that, once the fans have learned the words, this should be spectacular live.
Hope starts off in a fairly non-descript manner, before devolving into something horribly akin to Lost Love on the first disc. Ballads are all very well and good, even on metal albums, but there is a limit to the amount of cheese even Judas Priest can get away with, as proved by the next track, New Beginnings. Close your eyes and it’s all too easy to imagine Ville Valo rasping his way through this one – Halford even sounds spookily like him in places – and I can’t honestly say it’s a good thing.
By this point, I have to admit the intro tracks to every proper track are starting to grate quite seriously, and Calm Before The Storm isn’t one of the better ones. It does, however, lead into the title track (finally) which is in a different league to most of the album. Nostradamus is Judas Priest at their absolute best, and there’s an overwhelming sense of relief when the pounding beat and technical guitar work kick in, just when you thought you’d lost the ‘Priest to cheesy love songs. Strangely, despite being one of the most technical tracks here, it’s also the one they sound really comfortable on – maybe there’s a lesson in there?
Future of Mankind continues in a slower, harsher vein with strong echoes of Mr Carlos Santana in the guitar work (I don’t mean that as a criticism!) and at over eight minutes long, it’s quite the finale to a very mixed bag of an album. So, to repeat the earlier question, is this their magnum opus or a pile of self-indulgent tosh?
It’s both. There are moments of pure tosh where more than one half-baked idea has been left unchecked and allowed to develop into something it can’t support, but there are also moments of sheer brilliance. When Nostradamus is good, it surpasses good and makes a claim on genius, but likewise the bad is simply appalling. So does the good stuff make up for the bad and justify buying this album? It’s a close call, but just about. Tracks like Prophecy and Nostradamus could be in the middle of a Vengaboys album and I’d still buy it for them – other standout tracks are War, Plague and Pestilence, Death and Persecution. Buy it for the classics-in-waiting and gloss over the dross for their sake.
8.5
Ellie
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