Judas Priest announced that they will go on their upcoming tour without Andy Sneap.

“Hello maniacs! We are chomping at the British Steel bit to return to world touring… celebrating 50 years of JUDAS PRIEST as an an even more powerful, relentless four piece heavy metal band – with Glenn coming out on stage with us here and there as before. Big thanks to Andy for all you’ve done and continuing to be in the production team for our new album… See you all soon headbangers!”

Andy Sneap was surprised and came out with the following statement: “Rob called me last Monday and said they wanted to move on as a four-piece, which I find incredibly disappointing after this amount of time but I respect his decision as they obviously have a vision how they want this to play out.

“This always was a temporary situation, and like I’ve said before, I’ll always help the band any way I can, and that applies going forward also,” he continued.

“I’ve been a huge fan of the band since the early ’80s and it was mind-blowing to play onstage with the guys and quite frankly terrifying in the beginning at such short notice.

“We are moving forward with the new album next month and look forward to making a killer follow-up to ‘Firepower’,”