Nostradamus

There are literally five billion ways in which albums can be interpreted and described. Sometimes you can claim an album to be one the best of all time, sometimes you can claim an album to be equivalent to a bucket full of horses**t. More often than not it’s somewhere in between. Not as often though, you may stumble upon that album that you may not necessarily like, but were you hear a lot of good stuff and get a feeling that the album could have been much better if things had been done differently. As far as I’m concerned, there are two metal albums that symbolizes this type of album more than any other; Falling Into Infinity by Dream Theater (For which a similar review has been written) and the album this review is written for, Nostradamus by Judas Priest.

It was almost surreal how much s**t Nostradamus got when it was released in 2008. The backlash Judas Priest got for that album was so enormous that the band had to scrap all their ideas of going full on “prog” and performing the whole album live. To this day, only 2 songs from the album have been performed live: “Prophecy” and “Death”. The backlash also made me hesitant to listen to the album, to the point where I didn’t actually listen to it in full until 2017, 2018 or something like that. I was so scarred by the negative reviews that I was almost afraid of the album, and everything related to it. Now however, a couple of years and multiple listens later, I have realized that had nothing to be afraid of. Because when it comes down to it, I think Nostradamus is a good album with the potential of being a great album.

First things first: I fully understand if a Judas Priest fan gets turned off by Nostradamus, considering the fact the album contains so many characteristics that we normally don’t associate with Judas Priest. Symphonic elements, bloated keyboards, a double album. There is little to nothing normal about this album from by Judas Priest standard. The Symphonic elements and bloated keyboards don’t bother me that much, even though I would have preferred another method by the band. More on that later. As far as the quantity goes, I definitely agree that the album has too much material on it. Nostradamus is a perfect example of a double album that would have worked much better as a single album. They should had trimmed the fat and kept the best songs because when the album hits, it hits harder than anything. This how the track list of Nostradamus should had been IMO.

1. Dawn Of Creation/Prophecy (as one song)
2. Revelations
3. War
4. Sands Of Time/Pestilence And Plague (as one song)
5. Death
6. Conquest
7. Lost Love
8. Persecution
9. Visions
10. Nostradamus
11. Future Of Mankind

Add some ideas from other songs as well, and you would had had an album that would rival some of Judas Priest’s best albums of all time. There… I said it. That’s how good some of these songs are. You would have had a handful of heavy, speed metal barnstormers (“Nostradamus”, “Persecution”), a handful of traditional heavy metal anthems (“Prophecy”, “Revelations”) a ballad (“Lost Love”) and a almost doom metal song (“Death”). A varied 60-70 minutes album with a reasonable number of tracks. No stupid interludes. No 20+ number of songs. Just a standard length, symphonic Judas Priest album. As it is right now, you have to be patient and dig deep into the album to find the great stuff, and I can fully understand if a traditional Judas Priest doesn’t want to do that. It’s not easy to find the great stuff on Nostradamus considering it is surrounded by so much bloated garbage.

Speaking of the symphonic atmosphere. When I saw Judas Priest live recently I spoke with another person and we talked about Nostradamus. He said it would have been way more suitable if the band had worked with an orchestra when creating the album, instead of relying on bloated synthesizers. That was something that I had never thought of, but I definitely agree with him. As it is right now, the synthesizers take so much place that the album at times feels like a parody of a symphonic metal album. You can’t just amp up the synthesizers to maximum volume and call the album symphonic or progressive. That’s not how it works, and it’s an insult to bands that actually spend time and energy on constructed a well-made, sustainable symphonic metal album. Sometimes the synthesizers work on Nostradamus but for the most part, they give the opposite effect of what the band wanted to achieve with them. The band wanted to use the synthesizers to make the album sound epic, but it ends up sounding annoying and pathetic instead. You can tell that the band wasn’t used to working in an orchestral, “progressive” environment, because the way they execute their musical ambition is actually kind of amateurish. Working with an orchestra probably would had been much better, since it would have allowed the band to work with different musical dynamics and written songs that was more suited to the symphonic metal format. As it is now, you can barely hear KK Downing’s and Glenn Tipton’s guitar at times since they are so buried underneath the bloated synthesizers.

Judas Priest really missed the opportunity to caught lightning in a bottle when they made Nostradamus. If the album had had fewer songs and hadn’t been as symphonically bloated as it is, but instead created with a symphonic mindset and had a natural symphonic nature, I’m certain that the album would have worked wonders and had a much better reputation among Judas Priest fans. As it is now, it is an album that has a lot of great stuff on it, stuff that gets drowned in bloated synthesizers and in the sea of subpar musical quantity.