Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Loft / Balingen / Germany
Concert date: June 27, 2009
Attendance: 400
Ticket price: €5.00
When the second day of this year’s Bang Your Head!!! festival wrapped up in the little German town of Balingen, the diehards who were in no way ready for bed after Blind Guardian, W.A.S.P., Y&T, Exodus, etc… had only one real option left: fill their veins with the proper Judas Priest elixir. Okay. Or at least a close approximation of Judas Priest. All it took was crossing the street as I left the festival grounds. That’s where Subway sits, open all night. Downstairs they make 12-inch sandwiches fast enough to blow you up if you don’t face one completely starving, and upstairs is the Loft nightclub. That’s where the German Judas Priest tribute band Just Priest showed up to throw the festival “after show party”.
Just Priest are a crew of seasoned old tomcats. The lineup is vocalist Udo Welz (Agent Orange), guitarists Tom Naumann (ex Primal Fear, ex Sinner) and Stefan Barth (Agent Orange), bassist Thomas “Huyz” Mössinger and drummer Didi Vogt.
The band took the little club stage shortly after midnight. There’s no better idea than kicking off the show with Judas Priest classics, and opener Hellion does exactly that. The place was nicely packed, with some 400 people squeezed in, and the crowd gave the band a thunderous welcome. From the very first impression, judging by the sound and the tuning, you could tell we were in for a really good approximation tonight. Of course, it would all come down to the vocals.
Hellion flows naturally into Electric Eye. The most fun part was the surprise when we all heard the singing but the singer was nowhere to be seen. That’s part of the whole ritual of Judas Priest shows, where Halford always makes his way to the stage in countless unexpected ways. For this opening stretch, Udo Welz took over the side balcony on the inner wall of the club and strutted along it Halford-style while tackling the verses, way up high above the stage. The lighting guys knew exactly what to do and kept a white spotlight on the singer. That was the first surprise, just like Halford, who usually “descends from the sky” during the first song. The singer kept warming up his pipes with the anthemic Metal Gods, which dragged a nice number of fired-up metalheads, especially those drunk on hop juice, right up to the front of the stage. The feeling was superior, because Just Priest have really studied the look and work of their legends and role models Judas Priest down to the last detail. The stage moves of each member, the shoulder-to-shoulder shredding of the two guitarists, and above all Udo Welz, who surprised in the best possible way. This guy not only nailed even Halford’s highest registers with total credibility, and even pushed them up half a tone at the ends of verses, which Halford loved doing in his best years on stage too, he also took on Halford’s typical stage act wholesale. Dressed all in black, of course, though not leather. More fabric went into the outfits. Maybe the band’s budget doesn’t allow it, or maybe it’s the fact that without leather you definitely don’t sweat as badly under the spotlights as you do when you’re wrapped in leather.
The second oddity of the night was that Bruce Dickinson’s former guitarist, and current Driver guitarist, Roy Z turned up in front of the stage. But in a state you wouldn’t wish on anyone who wants to meet him, least of all a fan of his work in heavy metal. Roy Z arrived at the stage properly wasted. He staggered and rolled around by the stage, and was annoying and extremely pushy toward everyone who had come to enjoy the music. Since he and Tom Naumann are obviously friends, he decided to really mess with the guitarist during the show. The whole time he kept knocking over his monitors, pressing the buttons on his guitar effects pedals and turning his mic stand around. Tom, who has clearly known Roy for a very long time, took it all with total stoicism. He laughed at Roy, shook his hand, even though Roy spent a good chunk of his visit with the middle finger of his right hand stuck up at the band on stage. He was obviously thinking: “Amateurs. You work so cheap! I could do all this better. And all by myself.”
Just Priest are worthy of playing the magnificent, inimitable catalog of the giants of the heavy metal craft. They won us over especially with the band’s heaviest material, like The Sentinel, with a superb rendition of the multi-part guitar solos that Stefan and Tom traded in the style of Downing and Tipton. Other standouts were the classics Beyond The Realms Of Death, Victim Of Changes, Painkiller, Desert Plains, Touch Of Evil and Freewheel Burning. Diamond And Rust was played after the original version from the live Judas Priest album “Unleash In The East”. They stood out above all thanks to the excellent vocals of Udo Welz, who gave the Just Priest show complete credibility. Every single building block of this tribute band worked brilliantly, not to mention the superior drumming of Didi Vogt.
Just Priest thought of absolutely everything. They didn’t forget about the Harley-Davidson either, which Udo rode onto the stage and unleashed the whole of Hell Bent For Leather on. Judas Priest style, naturally. The band backed those songs up with the obligatory material from the “British Steel” (1981) album (Grinder, Metal Gods, Breaking The Law, Living After Midnight), added the Fleetwood Mac original Green Manalishi (With The Two Pronged Crown), and then, right at the very end, lifted the show to its peak with the lewd “Sreaming For Vengeance” (1982) classic You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’.
The Just Priest show at the Loft club was also spiced up by strippers, scantily clad in silky lace veils, who shamelessly wriggled around on the balcony. A helping of Judas Priest with an excellent approximation of German origin. In fact, the Judas Priest catalog is the foundation on which German heavy metal developed in the eighties and is still developing today. The quintet approached this legacy with extreme concentration, razor-sharp focus. Naumann so much so that he snapped a string on his Les Paul Gibson. Since there was of course no tech in sight, he simply dashed backstage himself to grab a Gibson Flying V. This gig radiated enormous respect from the members of Just Priest toward Judas Priest, really a deep love for Judas Priest’s music. What convinced us of that was the German perfection (proverbial to begin with) and hair-splitting precision. And once again it didn’t let us down. Just Priest are truly top-notch, I’d even say a professional copy of the original. I warmly recommend catching them when you get the chance!
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photo Gallery
