ROB HALFORD Explains How METAL GODS TOUR Lineup Was Conceived

Former JUDAS PRIEST frontman Rob Halford says that the lineup for HALFORD's upcoming The 2003 Metal Gods Tour was conceived very meticulously, with particular emphasis being placed on making the bill as diverse as possible. Speaking to Britain's Live4Metal yesterday (April 2),Halford said, "What we did was when we thought about this idea that has now become real, [we thought] you can go into so many different possibilities and it could have been a nightmare, unless we were actually focused and said, 'OK, without making chaos, let's try and keep this direct'," Rob explained. "So we worked with our friends in [booking agency] Universal [Attractions], the agent up in New York, and talked to them about this idea. The only real input that I put in, apart from finalizing what were gonna be really cool people to work with, was that I wanted this to try and be as broad as possible in not having a repetitive style of metal acts following one another. I think we've achieved that. I think that the fact that you're gonna see TESTAMENT one minute, IMMORTAL the next minute, PRIMAL FEAR the next minute, AMON AMARTH the next, CARNAL FORGE, so on and so on… I think that kind of expresses what we were hoping to achieve, which was giving a broad cross section of as many different types of metal as we possibly could. It's gonna be great from a listener's point of view. If you're a TESTAMENT fan that has never been exposed to IMMORTAL, then hold on to your head because they're just behemoths. I'm sure that everybody is gonna be going in there with an open mind, a love of metal, and enjoy the whole experience if they can get there early enough to get the lot in. That's the other reason that we didn't go completely stupid and put 20 bands on the bill. We wanted to make it realistic, that people could come from school or work and catch the whole thing. We just looked at who was available and, again, that's the other consideration because a lot of bands are already booked in for dates through the spring and the summer and other times. These guys just ran to it and said, let's do it, especially Chuck [Billy] and everybody from TESTAMENT. We had those recent shows at the start of the year - those three back-to-back things with the House of Blues. That was enormously successful. That was a bit of a litmus test for us."

Read the whole interview here.