Judas Priest's recently released concept album, Nostradamus, has already become their highest charting LP to date! The record, which sold 42,000 copies in its first week of release, shot all the way up to #11. Their previous album, Angel of Retribution actually sold more copies in its first week - 58,000 -  but obviously did not chart quite as high. Whatever popular opinion ends up being on the album, it is proving that Judas Priest remains relevant after more than three decades of music.

1978 was one of Judas Priest's finest years, as well as one of the original Black Sabbath's absolute worst.

It was ultimately a transitionary period in the genre, as the marriage of punk's do-it-yourself ethics with metal's musicianship that was pioneered by Motörhead the previous year would truly take off in 1979 with an explosion of new bands.

Judas Priest have released a brand-new music video for "War," off of their recently released new LP, Nostradamus. The video, which was premiered by the Headbanger's Blog, is a computer-animated spectacle which doesn't present even a glimpse of the legendary British metal band, but rather focuses on great apocalyptic imagery. Watch it for yourself:

Metal took an interesting turn in 1977 as it inherited influence from another popular new genre.

You guessed it. 1977 was the year that our beloved punk rock took the U.K. by storm. It was the year of The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Damned and The Stranglers. Punk was essentially rock music stripped to its barest elements and given a major dose of social angst and unrest. It arised in resistance to the "overproduced arena rock" of the day, which, in their minds, included heavy metal.

You would think that Judas Priest would have done everything that there is to do in heavy metal by this point, but apparently there was one mountain left to climb: a concept album. The legendary "metal gods" from Birmingham have served up a whopping 23-track platter of pure metallic epicness in the form of Nostradamus, a concept album that chronicles the life and prophecies of the famous 16th-century French apothecary of the same name.