Judas Priest Live
It's quite impossible to argue about tastes in music. Unlike a movie or a book where there are criteria for whether it is a good or a boring story, music has no such limitations. You either like metal or classical music or pop or you don't. Of course within the categories there is good and awful music but the genres are in your genes, simple as that. I definitely have the metal gene. Music leaves me untouched and cold unless I can bang my head (evil grin).
So last night I had a good portion of headbanging – actually so bad (or good) that my muscles are protesting heavily today!
Went to see Judas Priest. They announced that their Epitaph tour would be their last World Tour and so maybe this was their last time to come to Japan and I went to see them in the legendary Budokan hall (more about the hall in my Eric Clapton concert review). The place was nearly sold out, though not entirely, with some odd "block" vacancies in the arena. I have been to Budokan quite a number of times from J-Rock concerts over Clapton to Priest and the arena is always filled with chairs. I think they have some security/safety issues about the hall, which does not allow them to have the arena as "all standing". Interestingly the Saitama Arena where I saw Metallica, two years ago had no such issues and the arena was without chairs, Budokan and Tokyo Dome though always come with chairs. I don't know the secret behind that.
Anyway, despite the chairs the atmosphere in the hall was great and, as I like it, nobody (or almost nobody) remained seated as soon as the lights went out. Everyone jumped to his/her feet and a guttural "Priest" rose from 10,000 throats.
I was amazed by the punctuality. The concert was supposed to start at 19:00 and it did start at 19:00 sharp. Didn't know British heavy metalists have a nick for punctuality 
Priest did 7 concerts in Japan, three of which in the greater Tokyo area. Their Budokan gig was the last of their tour through the country.
I had expected Rob Halford to appear on stage with his Harley right in the beginning and was a bit disappointed when that wasn't the case. I had not much time for giving it much thought though, since the band fired up the audience right from the start. After two songs Rob Halford addressed the audience in three stages: hello Budoukan, hello Tokyo, hello Japan. He completely ignored that half of the audience probably did not understand what he was saying and explained the concept of their world tour: to take the fans through 40 years of Judas Priest history and announced that they'd play one or more songs from every of their albums. No matter what he said or whether he was understood, the crowd roared appreciatively 
I forgot about four fifths of the set up, but they played: Star Breaker, Judas Is Rising, Never Satisfied, Beyond the Realms of Death, You've Got Another Thing Coming and many other songs. The only ballad they played was Diamonds and Rust (unfortunately not my favorite "Angel".)
Rob changed his costume (mostly coats and jackets) after every or at least every other song. My seat was on the second stand to the west of the stage and luckily Rob did his costume changing there and I could see him vanishing from stage and into a little tent behind a curtain very clearly and follow the costume changes.
They had a screen behind the drumset on which they mostly just showed photos of the album jackets from which they were just playing a song.
Priest played without much pause, the longest break was maybe two minutes and the atmosphere in the hall was fantastic. People had a great time and celebrated their band. I was standing on a gallery of the second stand and had ample space for headbanging and jumping and a bunch of Japanese youngsters around me did the same. The average age of the audience was definitely under that of the band. Good to see people in their twenties screaming at the 60 year old heavy metal grandpas.
About two hours into the concert we got our Harley and Rob rode it (very carefully) on stage where it remained for the last few songs. He wrapped a Japanese flag over his shoulders for one song, then draped the Harley with it. Rob said his only Japanese word three times, giving us a triple farewell: arigatou Budoukan, arigatou Tokyo, arigatou Japan.
As we thought the concert was over at 21:20 and everyone had left except for the drummer, the band had a little surprise for us in store. The drummer, Scott Travis, went back to his drums, grabbed a mike and said. "Thank you all, Japan has always been very good to Judas Priest, we thank you for that and we love you and if you scream loud enough we'll play another song." Of course the audience roared and they played one more round. For that last song, they let down this gigantic cloth over the screen in the background.
So, we got a nice long two and a half hours of Judas Priest and they proved that one is never too old for metal. They had power, energy and enthusiasm and managed to ignite the crowd. It was a fantastic evening and I gotta go to more metal gigs again! Thanks Judas Priest for coming to Japan.
