Best Judas Priest Album

Screaming for Vengeance didn't get nearly enough love here, top 40 phase or whatever the jams on it are so fucking solid

can't believe 0 votes for stained class, baffled by the rocka rolla/british steel love, but glad that SWOD is rightly recognized as their best album

special shout-out to "sinner" from sin after sin - that superstoned middle interlude is one of my fav musical moments of all time

My favourite will always be Defenders of the Faith. Personally I've always thought Vengeance is a bit overrated, the title track is mediocre and a couple others just make me cringe ("Devil's Child", for one)...I prefer the dense, cold sound of Defenders.

(Stained Class and Hell Bent For Leather aren't far behind)

oh man the sfv title track was kicking my ass today. those guitars!

0 votes for stained class is insane!

turbo tied with painkiller is also pretty weird.

as far as top 40 priest goes, I think I prefer point of entry to screaming for vengeance. but both are cool.

we follow the dreamer

British Steel way too high in this original poll. Good album,but even the high points are way watered down compared to their glory days. I'd take Sin after Sin, Stained Class, Sad Wings, even Defenders and Screaming over it.

just this week i have been listening to sad wings and everytime i think to myself holy shit dude this is like the best album

the only downside to it is I think Rob's vocal on Victim of Changes pales in comparison to how he did it on the live album.

"Tyrant", though.......ohhhhhhhhhh man.

best song

Rocka Rolla has to be a joke on this list. that album is purely forgettable.

today is a perfect day for Unleashed in the East, featuring the best version of "Victim of Changes" ever...

Rocka rolla at 2 might be the most perplexing poll result ive ever seen on ilm

Also painkiller has become overrated I think

I love Painkiller. though really I think my favs are Sad Wings, Stained Class, Sin After Sin, and Hell Bent...really that period for me was just awesome. Defenders and Screaming are great too.

Rocka Rolla was very zzzzzZzzzzZZzzzz.

How the hell did Stained Class not get any votes?

Christ "Electric Eye" is such a killer tune

When I start listening to Judas Priest, sometimes I get all anxious and twitchy and just think of all the amazing Judas Priest songs at my fingertips and how I want to listen to ALL of them NOW and start making playlists in my head and getting all worked up and then before I know it I wake up at 3:00 in the morning with Sin After Sin spinning in its runout groove and a half-glass of bourbon beside me on the floor. Does this happen to anyone else?

Yes, but really it goes back to Stained Class.

How great is Defenders of the Faith, though? Shiiiiit... That and Stained might be my top two!

rock hard

ride free

ALLLLLL DAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

ALLLL NIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT

k I figured I'd divert talk of the new album here so we can focus on other albums in the metal thread.

I've had about five listens now and whereas on first listen I couldn't tell if I 'liked' or 'loved' the album, the repeat listens have really solidified what an incredible album this is and it has definitely elevated to "great" territory.

It just feels more genuine than its two predecessors - now the only song I don't dig on it is "Crossfire".

In a way it's kind of amazing Halford sounds as good as he does, because between 1982 - 1991 he recorded some of the most challenging metal vocals of all time and then had to tour doing those songs.

if this album had come out in 2005 instead of "Angel of Retribution" i'd have been ecstatic.

Yeah, this is a joyous album. It's wonderful to hear Priest playing to their strengths and sounding so alive in 2014. I can see it becoming a big sentimental favourite of mine.

I haven't heard the previous couple records yet, but now I feel like I need to.

listening to Stained Class now. I think "White Heat, Red Hot" is one of my fav Priest tunes

that high pitched squealing lead that occasionally shows up during the verse just accentuates Halford's squealing vocals

Turbo tied with Painkiller ahead of Defenders; zero votes for Stained Class; Rocka Rolla in second place... is there some kind of weird parallax in the UK vs. USA reputations of these albums? or just a whole lotta challopsy metalheads?

Turbo has gotten a lot of apologia in recent years (not a criticism - I like when albums maligned at the time get re-examined years later), although voting for it as the 'best' is suspect.

I know there are some Priest purists who saw Painkiller as a misguided one-dimensional attempt to take a page from the bands they inspired (hint: they're RONG), and I think there are probably more Priest fans who rate Painkiller in their top 3 than outright vote it the 'best'.

Rocka Rolla was merely challopsy voting - check out the Bad Religion poll where Into the Unknown won. the zero votes for Stained Class was the real o_O to me.

i'm listening to SFV right now and I'm on "Take These Chains" (which I don't hate) but it makes me wonder, is there a thread for songs that completely obliterate the forward momentum of an album?

the amount of excess reverb on Rob's voice all over SFV is criminal as well. Glad they dialed it back on Defenders.

that said the title track is up next and stuff may be broken in my bedroom

I always love analyzing Halford's vocals over the years as his evolution was so, so gradual. what's interesting to me is that while Sin After Sin was really where he started increasing the usage of 'dirty tone' in his chest voice, he kept his falsetto mostly pure tone for years, other than the rare occasion here and there. He started dirtying up that tone a slight amount on Screaming for Vengeance but Defenders is where he started liberally turning his falsetto into more of a dirty shriek.

the breadth of his range in his heyday was quite impressive. I mean, he was hitting falsetto notes about as high as Dickinson at times, but Bruce's natural voice is essentially pretty high - even his 'low' notes (ie, opening of "Number of the Beast") aren't all that low. Whereas Rob had an expansive low range with a lot of resonance too. it wasn't no damn "8 octaves" like hyperbolic clowns trotted out, but it was quite insane.

I also just realized that holy hell, it's almost 2015, and Resurrection is almost 15 years old, and Angel of Retribution is almost 10.

The opener was Uriah Heep, which I thought was a bit of an odd choice.

they are probably bros from the early days

Uriah Heep also opened for them back in 2019 when I saw them.

so guess they've been friends for a reaaaaaaaaaaaaallly long time

This is a great setlist, which my 17 year old self probably did not fully appreciate.

McNichols Sports Arena, Denver, CO
12.02.82
World Vengeance Tour

The Hellion [played from tape]
Electric Eye
Riding on the Wind
Heading Out to the Highway
Metal Gods
Bloodstone
Breaking the Law
Sinner
Desert Plains
The Ripper
Diamonds & Rust (Joan Baez cover)
Devil's Child
Screaming for Vengeance
You've Got Another Thing Comin'
Victim of Changes
The Green Manalishi (With the Two Prong Crown) (Fleetwood Mac cover)
Hell Bent for Leather

there's not a dull moment in that set. like if you were looking for time to get a beer/pee, maybe you'd choose one of the Top 40 singles if you were real sick of it, but even then you might have to get a little on your pants to get back to your seat in time for the next one.

amusing that they ended with Hell Bent, as that one was often used as an opener across various stages of the 70/80s/90s.

Pretty sure they played "Living After Midnight," even though it's not included on that entry from setlist.fm.

xp Yeah, Hell Bent looks like the standard closer for that tour.

it's funny too, like, they have so many songs that can double as an opener as a closer. so many high intensity bangers that it becomes like "where do you put them", like you're filling out a baseball lineup card.

"Hell Bent" used to be the standard closer because that was when Rob would ride the Harley out from backstage. This was the set list when I saw them in 2008 (with Heaven and Hell, Motörhead, and Testament). I went with my brother — the only concert we've ever gone to together — and he brought his oldest son, who was eight or nine. He fell asleep in his seat toward the end of Priest's set.

Dawn of Creation [tape]
Prophecy
Metal Gods
Eat Me Alive
Between the Hammer and the Anvil
Devil's Child
Breaking the Law
Hell Patrol
Dissident Aggressor
Angel
The Hellion [tape]
Electric Eye
Rock Hard, Ride Free
Painkiller

Encore:
Hell Bent for Leather
The Green Manalishi (With the Two Pronged Crown)
You've Got Another Thing Comin'

Yeah, that was when Rob brought out the Harley. Man, that was fun.

Motörhead was a band I definitely didn't appreciate back in the day. I saw them when they opened for Ozzy on the Diary tour. It didn't help that they sounded like sludge in what was a fairly small venue.

looks like Hell Bent for Leather was mostly used as an opener between 1979-1980 and the Painkiller tour.

(i've listened to so many boots this week..it's been fun)

When I was about 12 to about 15, I had a giant poster of Rob and his Harley hanging up in my bedroom — the pose he was striking was straight out of Scorpio Rising, and it was literally taped to my closet door. I wonder what my mother thought...

what I can't figure out is what was Halford's deal for the reunion tour. dude was in relatively great vocal health, his voice had settled into a deeper baritone but he still had tons of power on the first two Halford solo albums and the live album (like he sang a version of "Riding on the Wind" which was incredible on that one).

so they pull out classics like "Exciter" and also the never-before-played "Hell Patrol", and the motherfucker sings the chorus to BOTH of them down one octave, sapping all intensity out of the song. like I was watching Youtube of the DVD they put out from that tour and dude was just scared of the high notes on a lot of songs.

they did "Hell Patrol" in 2019 and he did do the high notes. granted, he's found other ways to produce those notes, as he can't produce them like he did in 1991 (it's a little more head voice in the head/chest combo than previous)...but it's still coming out and pretty strong for a 75 year old.

I'd have been pretty mad to hear "Exciter" sung like a dude singing the song around a campfire had I paid all that money to see that first reunion tour.

xpost LOL....the raw, unsubtle grimy non-heteronormative sexuality of Priest is one of the best parts.

"Eat Me Alive" is better raw sexual energy than any hair band could come up with.

back to the vocal discussion, he released a second book that I haven't read yet, but I read an excerpt where he said he'd never taken any vocal lessons (not surprisingly, supposedly Dio didn't either, some people just come by it naturally), but it was fascinating to hear him describe how he *thinks* he produced the sound for various songs...like he outright didn't even know himself how he did it! He knew how to do it well enough that he could replicate it consistently, but even he was kind of flummoxed by how he created his signature sound.

meanwhile I've been singing since I was 11, took voice lessons for years, was a voice major at Florida State University for one year, and all of the pedagogy and theory about how to produce sound made me go cross-eyed and stressed out. I decided to change majors. I've since done professional a capella barbershop/caroling gigs, and yet after decades of work, practice, and study I can't do even a fraction of what he did in his prime. I doubt half of the men in the opera program at FSU could either.

like I even managed in my 30s-40s to add basically another octave via chest/head voice through a lot of work and effort and at the end of the day it's still not even close. I don't know how the dude ever did what he did in his prime or even how he does it today at age 75, admittedly in a much reduced capacity.

so they pull out classics like "Exciter" and also the never-before-played "Hell Patrol", and the motherfucker sings the chorus to BOTH of them down one octave, sapping all intensity out of the song. like I was watching Youtube of the DVD they put out from that tour and dude was just scared of the high notes on a lot of songs.

That's interesting. I saw Priest for the first time in 2021 on the 50th anniversary tour, and while I appreciated that Halford was going for just about all the high notes, I thought his occasional dips into lower registers sounded great and wished he would do that more.

oh for sure, there's definitely things *now* where it makes more sense to do that because he has to protect his instrument which is much more frail and it might sound better aesthetically than straining.

in 2004 though, he was in a bit better vocal health.

listening to Angel of Revolution for the first time in over a decade, and got to "Revolution"

did JP intentionally rip off "Mountain Song" here?

"Defenders Of The Faith" is all-time for me.

JAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
breakerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

LOVE BITES! (chakka-chukka-chakka)

A few months ago I saw Andy Edwards talking about Simon Phillips on Sin After Sin, he said he was a game changer for metal drumming and it might have only been a day's work for Phillips. I'm not a big enough Priest or metal fan to track all this stuff, so is this something people talk about often?