Best Judas Priest Album

Sad Wings is reaaaaaaaaaaally popular among heads.

my problem with Screaming is how uneven it is. "Take These Chains" follows three high octane tunes and just kills the forward momentum. Hiring an outside songwriter who wrote a song that really didn't have Priest's sound was a bit of a mistake - Haligan Jr did a better job on "Some Heads are Gonna Roll", but "Take These Chains" really hurts the forward momentum. Granted, after three ripping tunes, a change of pace was expected for the fourth track, but perhaps a ballad might have served better, rather than what felt like a Badfinger-sounding song.

Also have just never been that into "Pleasure and Pain" and "Fever", they feel a cut below the rest for me. But the rest of the album is so goddamned good it fairly well redeems it for me, but puts it a cut below classic. whereas I feel like Defenders actually IS the rightful classic.

how many times can i say 'forward momentum'

whereas I feel like "You've Got Another Thing Coming" was a good attempt at a radio tune, very simple, catchy, and effective. the right way to 'sell out' for lack of a better word.

listened to a bunch of priest last year and agreed that defenders should be viewed way more highly. i think maybe the title cover/art wasn't as iconic as screaming or british steel?

it does kinda look like an Atari game cover.

and yeah even though British Steel isn't my fav by a long shot, the cover is all time. I even have a stein with that art on it. same with Screaming - perhaps my favorite cover.

stained class remains The One for me if i have to pick, i do not have to pick tho

BS is just an incredible image, so immediate

Sad Wings is the one I go to the most these days, just not a bad moment on the entire album. "Dreamer Deceiver" takes me places.

Defenders > Screaming for sure, but Screaming has the best cover art in Priest's entire catalog (with British Steel a close second) so it's always gonna pull people in.

"The Hellion/Electric Eye" is also an intro most dreams can't even dream of equaling

most BANDS jesus fuck

Absolutely, but I'm listening to Defenders now and there's, like, one song I don't love ("Night Comes Down") and that's after seven bangers in a row.

see I love that one.

I also love how homoerotic the album is.

his book was funny, he basically talks about "Jawbreaker" and says, yes, it's obviously about oral, how the fuck could anybody not know that.

I think it's basically fake (I think?) but I love Unleashed in the East

I think the instruments are live recorded but Halford's vocals were in the studio.

he explained in his book that the night it was recorded, he got very fucked up and gave one of his worst vocal performances or something.

but it's still a great listen as there are some iconic versions of songs on there, especially "Victim of Changes".

it's funny, too, like I was a big Priest live recording listener back in the day and I used to notice there'd be occasional live shows where he sounded like pitchy dogshit and then he talks about how high/drunk he used to get before shows and it makes more sense. because he's stellar more often than not, but if you're not on top of your game and singing music that challenging, it's going to go south.

I need to read his book. Halford was one of my favorite interview subjects back when I was writing more about metal. I got to talk to him twice; the second time, he actually pulled me in to guest on Jim Breuer's satellite radio show with him and the guitarist from his solo band.

And I don't hate "Night Comes Down," ftr — it's just that it's a Foreigner song stuck in the middle of a Judas Priest album.

I listen to 70s priest a lot

I think British steel is underrated, kinda on the same lines as killing machine. There’s literally nothing wrong with it.

the intro to "the rage" where they turn into a heavy metal version of the police for minute rules so much

listening to Nostradamus for probably the first and only time.

i'm sitting at the community pool, it's nice out, and it seems like the perfect setting to waste 100 minutes

I will preface that I read Adrien's review of this beforehand so I have mentally prepped myself for the awful lyrics

opening things with not one but two plodding songs is not the most auspicious start

jesus god, I can't do this. i'm falling asleep already

going to Redeemer of Souls instead, which isn't quite the knockout that Firepower was, but dope af anyway

Haha, Nostradamus is awful. A real shame because Rob sings the hell out of the wackadoo lyrics.

Compare that album with the subsequent two records with Richie, and it sounds so wooden and lifeless. Faulkner deserves a lot of credit for Priest's late renaissance.

that he does.

Rob H is indeed a fantastic interview: he told me that once the band heard AC/DC, they didn't much wanna do Sad Wings epic fantasy as much and Killing Machine and British Steel is where that comes to bear particularly; though the title cut of the former seems to modeled on ZZ Top, and as such is a completely unique and a secret classic Priest tune, and I think B.S. contains the worst Priest tune, "You don't have to be old to be wise."

"Killing Machine" the song totally sounds like ZZ Top, was just thinking that when I played the album yesterday.

There's another track on KM (can't remember which one now) where the guitar solo is a total Southern rock rip.

"Rock Forever"

I always giggle at that harmonized guitar solo because it sounds like Allman Brothers

i really like "dont have to be old"... i could picture Motorhead playing it... for me the loser on Steel is probably United - which feels like a failed attempt to do a queen-y anthem

Oddly, the first Priest album I got was Point of Entry. I think I got it from one of the record clubs. I don't remember anything from it, and I'm not sure I'm all that inclined to give it a re-listen.

"United" sucks.

for cheesy, derivative anthem songs, "Take On the World" from the previous album did it much better.

"You Don't Have to Be Old to Be Wise" is kinda dad-rocky even for that time, despite the non-dad lyrics.

United is really the only song on British Steel I don't like at all. it's a fairly consistent album in that I like almost everything on it, but nothing reaches the stratosphere for me either, other than "Metal Gods". solid B plus for me throughout.

Point of Entry I like the obvious songs off of it ("Heading Out to the Highway" is brilliant, "Solar Angels" and "Desert Plains" as well), but despite being into more AOR Priest, the other songs made next to no impression on me.

thanks to me buying that boxed set I now own the Ripper albums, might listen to them for a laugh.

"Your head
You will lose it"

O WILL I NOW

Point of Entry might have been my first Priest album, too. But I bought a bunch all at once right after that — Hell Bent For Leather, British Steel, Unleashed In The East and Screaming For Vengeance. They were my absolute favorite band when I was 11-12-13.

I went through a real Stained Class phase in high school. The tape rarely left my Walkman for about a year.

my Priest evolution was weird. since I started with Painkiller, and loved that album, young and newly into more extreme metal me was a bit disappointed that this didn't match their other stuff as much.

However, I pivoted to Defenders of the Faith next, which was as close as you'd get, and loved it immediately. problem was as a teen, I then got the Metal Works compilation, and the 70s stuff didn't work for me as much. I wanted them in full leather, dual harmony, cheese ice-cream headache scream meedly meedly dragon comes in the night metal.

so for a while I talked endlessly about how amazing Priest were and yet like I only had those three releases. I then got Stained Class in college and HATED IT. I said "what the fuck is this old people music" and flung it into the corner of my room. yet I got Sad Wings of Destiny and thought it kicked ass, even from the beginning. because "Victim of Changes" always resonated with me, and it's such an interesting proggier disc, which is what I was into.

Picked up Screaming for Vengeance next year of college and loved it. but didn't get the rest until I was 23.

was in a CD Warehouse and decided to pick up Killing Machine/Hell Bent for Leather, and by then, only a few years later, my tastes had developed a ton. I'd gotten into a bunch of 70s rock and metal over that timeframe, so on first listen I immediately loved all of the stuff that revulsed me as a musically naive teen, in fact, now I wanted to hear them rock in this style way more than I did the Painkiller style.

I think I picked up Sin After Sin next, which was an instant love, relistened to Stained Class (which now I thought was amazing), and then filled in the rest of the discography sans Point of Entry (which I only picked up a few years ago) and Turbo/Ram It Down (which I now only own due to the boxed set)....and of course the Ripper stuff.

didn't actually like Angel of Retribution when it came out. but weirdly at the time...I was still missing a fairly big chunk of their discography!

it just seems weird to me that I talked non-stop about Priest in my early 20s and I hadn't heard most of their albums at the time. whereas Maiden I kinda deep dove into all in one fluid motion.

jesus christ, I love "United" so much: several times, I've been in a perfectly stable frame of mind, and that song has moved me to tears… it is indeed moving, and "take on the World," while I like it, is markedly inferior…

I'm officialy a Turbo lover, such an odd sellout record, all those Roland guitar synths

love that post Neanderthal. I think with a lot of big-catalogue bands we end up carving our own paths, and it's awesome!

indeed. I love bands with big discographies and being in the discovery phase. it's so much fun.

I remember the day I bought Painkiller, weirdly. was on my way to a New Year's Eve party, 1998, senior year of high school, and picked it up from Camelot Music. I remember not wanting to stop driving after two songs, like I think I even took a longer route to get home so I could hear more of it.

I got Sad Wings of Destiny and thought it kicked ass, even from the beginning. because "Victim of Changes" always resonated with me

If the band had their way this would have kicked off side 2! Which is why there's a song called "Prelude" halfway through the album. Also wikipedia tells me the co-producers of this album were behind novelty reggae act Typically Tropical, whose UK novelty hit "Barbados" came out around the same time.

Anyway this album wipes the floor with any of the others, although I can see why they pivoted to the straightforward style as prog metal wouldn't be invented for a while.

Relistening to Screaming as a result of this thread. I agree with Neanderthal, "Pain and Pleasure" is kind of a cut below most of the rest of the album, but when the title track kicks in just after that, it's fuckin' magic.

I was lucky enough to see that tour back in the day. They were hugely entertaining, and pretty much at the peak of their powers.

fucking jealous you got to see that.

the title track is an all time rager.

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.