JUDAS PRIEST, MESHUGGAH, AT THE GATES Confirmed For Italy's GODS OF METAL Festival

According to a posting on the Italian rock/metal webzine Groovebox.it, JUDAS PRIEST, MESHUGGAH and AT THE GATES are among the newly confirmed bands for the Gods of Metal festival, set to take place June 27-29, 2008 in Bologna, Italy. The festival billing is now shaping up as follows:

IRON MAIDEN (June 27 headliners)
JUDAS PRIEST (June 29 headliners)
MESHUGGAH
AT THE GATES
YNGWIE MALMSTEEN
ENSLAVED

More bands will be announced soon.

As previously reported, JUDAS PRIEST has also been confirmed for next year's Sweden Rock Festival, which will be held June 4-7, 2008 in in Sölvesborg, Sweden.

JUDAS PRIEST's upcoming tour will include shows where the group's entire upcoming "Nostradamus" album (based on the legendary 16th century prophet Nostradamus) will be performed as well as concerts featuring the band's classic songs, singer Rob Halford revealed during a November 16, 2007 appearance on Eddie Trunk's "Friday Night Rocks" radio show.

Regarding the direction of the material and how whole concept for the "Nostradamus" record came about, Halford recently told PureGrainAudio.com, "It sounds absolutely fucking amazing and that's not me inflating it, it is genuinely spectacular. So we're still carrying on with that and it should be out sometime in 2008. The idea (for the record) came from our manager Bill Curbishley, because we were ready to go in and do another studio record, but Bill came to see us towards the end of the 'Angel of Retribution' tour, he came to Russia, we were playing Russia and we had lunch with him and he said, 'Look, I have this idea.' Bill manages THE WHO, you know, Pete and Roger, and Bill was behind the enormous success of 'Tommy' and he said, 'I just think that you know, maybe you should think about this possibility of doing a concept album and I've been thinking about this guy Nostradamus.' And as soon as he brought the name up, I'm like, I'm there, let's go, you don't have to say anything else. I knew something of him already like everybody does about the books that you read about him, or on the Internet or on TV, documentaries and I thought wow, this is absolutely brilliant so that's where it all came about from."

On the rumors that "Nostradamus" will be a double album, Halford said, "It is a rumor still. I mean, there is an enormous amount of material and you can only put so much on a single CD so you know, we're trying to tell the story of his life and we're trying to cover every significant moment of his life and I think you know, when we got it all recorded, that's when you're faced with the reality of how much time you got and how much a CD will afford you and the timing of it all. So we just ask everyone to bear with us and as we actually get into the mixing mode, we'll be able to be more definitive and tell everybody exactly what we've got, but we just want to make sure we tell his life story so we'll do whatever it takes to do that."