"My aorta ruptured and started spilling blood into my chest cavity," he told Rolling Stone in a statement. "From what surgeons told me, people don't usually come to the hospital alive." The horrific incident occurred while the band played at the Louder In Life Festival in Kentucky on September 26.

It was terrific Faulkner walked out of the show before being turned down at the Rudd Heart and Lung Center near the University of Louisville. He underwent emergency open-heart surgery, which "replaced part of his chest with a mechanical component," he told Rolling Stone. 

Judas Priest later postponed their US tour, but Faulkner's partner Mariah Lynch reassured fans that he was in "stable" condition. "[He's] so tough that he quit the show and continues to look like his hair," she wrote on Instagram. 

Faulkner said there was "no history of a bad heart, blocked arteries or high cholesterol," and the aneurysm was "completely from heaven." "When I watched footage from the Louder Than Life Festival in Kentucky, I saw on my face the confusion and sadness I felt playing Painkiller," he added.

The musician, who joined Judas Priest in 2011, says he tries not to think about what would happen if there weren't a dedicated heart station nearby. We can always go crazy with these things, but luckily I'm still alive," he said. "Whatever the situation, when I saw this tape, actually if I knew what I know now, I saw someone dying."

"I mean, I don't even have high cholesterol, and that could be the end for me." If you can check for yourself, please do it for me. " The London-born musician has played on Judas Priest's last two studio albums - 2014 Redeemer of Souls and 2018 Firepower, the latter of which reached number five on the UK charts. The band will release the career-setting box set Judas Priest: 50 Heavy Metal Years of Music on October 15.