Judas Priest star suffered aortic aneurysm on stage

Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner has shared details of the on-stage medical emergency that resulted in him having heart surgery last week.

The musician, 41, said he had suffered an aortic aneurysm that put his life in immediate danger.

"My aorta ruptured and started to spill blood into my chest cavity," he told Rolling Stone in a statement.

"From what I've been told by my surgeon, people with this don't usually make it to the hospital alive."

The horrific incident occurred while the band played the Louder In Life Festival in Kentucky on 26 September.

Incredibly, Faulkner finished the show, before being rushed to the nearby University Of Louisville's Rudd Heart and Lung Centre.

There, he was given emergency open heart surgery, where parts of his chest "were replaced with mechanical components", he told Rolling Stone.

"I'm literally made of metal now," he added.

Judas Priest subsequently postponed the rest of their US tour, but Faulkner's partner, Mariah Lynch, reassured fans that he was in a "stable" condition.

"[He's] so tough that he finished the show and kept the hair flips coming," she wrote on Instagram. "There's no one like him. We'd be lost without him."

Faulkner said he had "no history of a bad heart, no clogged arteries or high cholesterol" and that the aneurysm came "totally out of the blue".

"As I watch footage from the Louder Than Life Festival in Kentucky, I can see in my face the confusion and anguish I was feeling whilst playing Painkiller," he added.

The musician, who joined Judas Piest in 2011, said he was trying not to dwell on what would have happened if there hadn't been a specialist heart unit nearby.

"We can always drive ourselves crazy with these things but I'm still alive thankfully," he said. "Whatever the circumstances, when watching that footage, the truth is, knowing what I know now, I see a dying man."

"My point is I don't even have high cholesterol and this could've been the end for me, he concluded. "If you can get yourselves checked - do it for me please."

The London-born musician has played on Judas Priest's last two studio albums - 2014's Redeemer of Souls and 2018's Firepower, the latter of which reached number five in the UK charts.

The band are due to release a career-spanning box set, Judas Priest: 50 Heavy Metal Years of Music, on 15 October.

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