Last week, Judas Priest released an expansive 42-disc box set called 50 Heavy Metal Years, which features all of the band’s official studio and live albums, plus 13 discs of unreleased material and some cool memorabilia.
The huge collection, which celebrates the band’s 50th anniversary, was supposed to arrive during Judas Priest’s 50 Heavy Metal Years tour, but unfortunately the trek was postponed after guitarist Richie Faulkner suffered an aortic aneurysm at a September 26 show in Kentucky.
The good news is that Faulkner is now recovering from the health scare…and that the box set is available for fans to enjoy in all its glory.
Priest frontman Rob Halford tells ABC Audio that the collection is “a treasure trove.”
“[I]t really is heavy metal. It weighs about 50 pounds,” he notes. “But then, when you look at all of the CDs, and then you look at the list of the songs, it’s just remarkable. The team of people that worked with us to put this together did an outstanding job. It’s superb.”
He adds, “It’s a really beautifully crafted, curated piece of work. It’s got like almost like a metal museum-esque type of attitude to it, when you look at it and you listen to it.”
The unreleased material in the set includes eight newly restored, full-length concerts, and two discs of demos and various live tracks recorded over the years.
Halford says one of his favorite highlights is a 1975 live version of the rarity “Mother Sun,” a song that Judas Priest never recorded in the studio.
“It’s a real treat, ’cause it’s an extraordinary piece of work musically,” Halford notes.
You can order 50 Heavy Metal Years now at JudasPriestStore.com. Reflections, a collection of highlights from the box set, also is available.
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