Fan-filmed video of JUDAS PRIEST's entire September 11 concert at the Festhalle in Bern, Switzerland is now online, uploaded by the MrJayGatsby channel on YouTube.
Per Setlist.fm, PRIEST opened with "You've Got Another Thing Comin'", "Metal Gods" and "Breaking The Law" before moving into the stretch that has made this tour worth following: "The Ripper", "The Sentinel", "Desert Plains", "Lightning Strike", "Turbo Lover", "Steeler" and "Delivering The Goods". "Panic Attack", "Victim Of Changes", "No Surrender" and "Painkiller" closed the main set, with "The Hellion"/"Electric Eye", "Hell Bent For Leather" and "Living After Midnight" as the encore.
"The Ripper" and "Delivering The Goods" are the notable inclusions. Both are 1970s material, and neither had been performed live since 2019 before this run — they were reinstated at the tour opener. "Steeler", the closing track on 1980's "British Steel", is a similarly rare sighting.
The "Faithkeepers" tour began on July 25 at Germany's BOBfest, where the band played a seventeen-song set at Mönchengladbach's SparkassenPark. It follows less than a year after PRIEST's 22-city North American co-headlining run with Alice Cooper.
The band are still touring "Invincible Shield", their nineteenth studio album, and it remains one of the most commercially successful records of their career. It debuted at No. 18 on the Billboard 200 and entered the U.K. chart at No. 2, kept off the top only by Ariana Grande's "Eternal Sunshine". That is the highest U.K. placing PRIEST have ever managed — their previous best was No. 4 for "British Steel" in 1980. It was their fifth U.K. Top 10 album overall, after "British Steel", 2018's "Firepower" (No. 5), 2014's "Redeemer Of Souls" (No. 6) and the 1979 live album "Unleashed In The East" (No. 10). Elsewhere it went to No. 1 in Germany, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland, No. 5 in France, No. 8 in Italy and No. 16 in Australia.
Last year's European "Shield Of Pain" run leaned even harder on the back catalogue, marking the 35th anniversary of "Painkiller" with seven songs from it: the title track plus "All Guns Blazing", "Hell Patrol", "A Touch Of Evil", "Night Crawler", "One Shot At Glory" and "Between The Hammer And The Anvil". When that tour was announced in the autumn of 2024, the band promised a "rare" and "unique set" of "beloved classics" — a promise this year's setlist has carried over rather than retired.