Judas Priest embark on final world tour, Dave Mustaine sucks at subtlety, Big Four US Tour happening

Judas Priest has announced that, after nearly 40 years of rocking, they are ready to hang it up and they're going out with a bang. The band announced this morning that they are set to embark on their final world tour, titled the "Epitaph" tour. So far only a handful of European festival dates are announced (good news for all of my European readers) including the Sauna Festival in Finland which just sounds awesome, but more are promised, including, presumably, some U.S. dates. The press release from the band's website reads:


"After storming the world for nearly 40 years and taking their very special brand of heavy metal to all four corners of the planet, JUDAS PRIEST - one of the most influential heavy metal bands of all time, have announced this will be their final world tour!!

However, the mighty PRIEST will certainly be going out strong as they rock the planet starting in 2011 on the massive EPITAPH tour - hitting all the major cities throughout the world they will be playing the songs that helped make the name JUDAS PRIEST synonymous with heavy metal!

With all guns blazing and amps cranked to eleven, the band will be giving all their fans one last chance to witness the ultimate metal experience that is JUDAS PRIEST!

JUDAS PRIEST will be starting their world tour in Europe - we have just confirmed the following festivals for 2011 -

9th June Sweden Rock Festival, Sweden
11th June Sauna Festival, Finland
17th June Copenhell Festival, Copenhagen, Denmark
19th June Hellfest, Nantes, France
22nd June Gods of Metal Festival, Milan, Italy
25th June Graspop Festival, Belgium
23rd July High Voltage Festival, London, UK
5th August Wacken Festival, Germany

Stay tuned as we announce more dates - information will be forthcoming soon - so start getting prepared to rock one final time with the incomparable JUDAS PRIEST!!"

Another "Big" piece of news today comes in the form of a Dave Mustaine tweet: "Just went through a couple weeks of hell arranging something special for summer. Stay tuned! We're going to have some Big shows coming up."

Gonna be just like old times. Mustaine left, James Hetfield right

The capital B in "big" is obviously intentional, leading many including myself to presume that there's going to be a Big Four U.S. tour in summer 2011! Many of the Big Four guys have been hinting at this and jawing about it since the Big Four dates in Europe this past summer, but this is the most explicit any of the guys have been in discussing the tour. I'm expecting something similar to Metallica's Summer Sanitarium Tour, in which the band played nothing but football stadiums. There's gonna be no excuse to miss this tour if you're a metal fan, so save up your money now, I'm guessing tickets will not be cheap.