I caught the advance screening of Judas Priest’s “Epitaph” DVD last night at the Clearview Chelsea Theater and wow what an exciting blast of Metal power it was……For those in the unaware, “Epitaph” was the title of the last go round for Judas Priest touring and lucky for those who didn’t get around to seeing it, the whole show was captured on video to be released in this fashion.  The show was filmed at the Hammersmith Apollo and my deeper analysis of the evening can be enjoyed by clicking the poster below.  That will scoot you over to the Event Reviews section of PiercingMetal.com where I stored the article.  Then come on back here to scroll down and enjoy some images that I captured during the night.

Soon this screen would fill up with the majesty and might of Judas Priest in concert.  As I lined out in my article, our viewing was at the Clearview Chelsea Cinema on the West Side in NYC but the film was also being shown around the country at participating theaters.  Of course this was a one night only thing.  Did you go?

The film was set to start at 8pm and while we got a false start we then got fifteen minutes of “dead time”, no previews or anything until Eddie Trunk walked into the theater to speak to us about the show we were going to see.  I felt that the lack of any previews was a bad move on Clearview’s part as I had seen “Iron Man 3” earlier in the day at the Regal Theater Union Square and we got preview clips of a number of exciting films.  Anything would have been better than silence.

Eddie spoke briefly and introduced the Metal God Rob Halford and the bands new guitarist Richie Faulkner.  Halford actually arrived in a wheelchair.  More on that is explained in the article.  I did not take any photos of Rob in this manner though because I did not want to present him in this light.

Now please don’t overly critique these next few shots as they were taken by my little Lumix camera as the band performed on the big screen in front of me.  I was sitting in the fourth row of the theater and now remember exactly why I generally sit a little further back or in a balcony front row.  Wow does my neck hurt and I was not even headbanging.  Anyways, these were snagged just to give you an idea about what is in store for you when you pop the DVD into your player.

Judas Priest’s “Epitaph” will be available on May 28th and you can order a copy on DVD or Blu-ray in advance via Amazon.com with these links below.  I recommend it.  So I wonder how many of you might have seen the film at one of its showings.  If you did have such an experience, please let us know your thoughts via the comments below.  I look forward to reviewing this particular release for sure and adding it to my Judas Priest section in the music video library.