Judas Priest - The Fathers of Metal

Among the founding fathers of metal, yet never at the cutting edge like Iron Maiden and Metallica, who themselves would be unthinkable without them, Judas Priest (Birmingham, 1970) have, over the course of their immensely long career, significantly shaped - largely by creating it outright - the metallic sound of three decades: the Seventies, the Eighties and the Nineties. Sad Wings of Destiny, their masterpiece, is the ultimate distillation of hard rock at its closest to Seventies metal. Screaming For Vengeance - anticipated by a whole string of albums that worked out its dynamics - is the wellspring for the Eighties sound of that hugely fertile strand of metal/hard rock running parallel to, and irreducible to, the classic metal of Iron Maiden and the heavy-metal of Metallica. Painkiller ushers in the Nineties, dominated by progressive-metal.

It's hard to find a metal band that hasn't been influenced by them in some way. Talking about bands like Judas Priest means, in a sense, talking about a different era from today's. But the fact that they're still active now, and still celebrated by countless bands, simply means that era hasn't lost its appeal, and people still feel the need to revisit it, even with a fair bit of museum dust clinging to it. 

Judas Priest were made up of guitarists Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing and singer Rob Halford. The former pair's sturdy, enveloping guitar textures - owing a clear debt to Ritchie Blackmore - and the latter's powerful, multi-hued falsetto would have an enormous influence on both their successors and their contemporaries. Even in their more outward posturing, the trio set a trend, securing magazine front covers for their theatrics: from the leather-and-studs look (which they're said to have invented) to the revival of the macho rock myth, caught between morbid necrophiliac and sexual undertones and the crudest kind of epic grandeur - examples of which abound (it's enough to recall gigs featuring Harley-Davidson motorbikes rolling out on stage). Judas Priest, when they weren't setting the trends themselves, followed them, never averse to boosting their earnings and making compromises with the market.

The debut, Rocka Rolla (1974), is not the terrible album it's usually made out to be. Released at a moment of waning innovation in British hard rock and rock in general, it manages, while still staying within the hard rock fold, to make important strides towards what would become metal. The debts owed are not only to Deep Purple ("Rocka Rolla") and Black Sabbath ("Never Satisfied"), but also, for instance, to Traffic ("One For The Road"). The album tries, somewhat confusedly and naively, to position itself amid the various currents of the time; still, it serves at least to stir the waters and, through Halford's voice, to hint at outcomes that wouldn't be long in coming.

Sad Wings Of Destiny (1976) is one of the ten most important metal albums of all time. In terms of innovation and the intrinsic quality of the songs, it stands alongside "Paranoid", "Overkill", "Diamond Head", "Iron Maiden", "Kill'em All". It's on a par with the other two monumental works of '76 — a year that was a true annus mirabilis for hard & heavy, as '83 would later be — Rainbow's "Rising" and "2112" by the Canadian prog band Rush; the contemporaneous "Technical Ecstacy" by Black Sabbath, finally, confirms the passing of the torch between the historic Birmingham band and the new champions of metal.

"Victim Of Changes" is the absolute masterpiece: a symphony of clear Deep Purple lineage, typically 70s in character, yet with a character all its own — if only for the sharpness of Halford's voice — that allows it to say and do entirely new things. Other masterpieces include: "The Ripper", with monumental and hugely influential guitar work, its atmosphere epic and desolate, as direct — existential — as it is orchestrated; "Dreamer Deceiver", the quintessence of the "progressive ballad" that would earn so many mediocre progressive-metal bands a fortune twenty years later — songs obviously incomparable to this superb ode to sorrow and despair; "Prelude", a piano instrumental capable of reaching peaks of tension — and atmosphere — worthy of a dark Morricone.

The other tracks are: "Deceiver", closer to rock'n'roll (Ac/Dc) than the epic; "Tyrant", a perverse and dark chase after a melody that is duly found — the Black Sabbath influence is decisive on the guitar, especially the rhythm guitar (the lead guitar incorporates more experimental and "American" sounds): the rest of the rhythm section remains somewhat in the shadows; "Genocide", with the acid-rough guitars fashionable at the time, overall too much in thrall to Ac/Dc-style hard rock; "Epitaph", a mawkish — and sui generis — piano serenade, capable nonetheless — besides showing off all the band's theatrical flair — of linking Queen's surrealism to the rhetoric of Savatage ("Streets") by way of a soft nostalgia; "Island Of Domination" is, all in all, a mannered rehash of the album's masterpieces, but occasionally — as in the chorus, the guitar distortions, the tempo changes — it boasts flashes of insight that contain within them the whole reason for metal's future.

"Victim Of Changes", "The Ripper", "Dreamer Deceiver" — these three compositions alone are enough to secure Judas Priest's place in history.

With Sin After Sin (1977) Judas Priest carry their work forward, finally signing to a major, CBS. It's a transitional album that in places begins to offer a glimpse of the development of their style, which would reach full maturity on the powerful, razor-edged records to come, while still remaining largely tied to the coordinates that Sad Wings of Destiny had stamped onto the British scene. There's a certain Deep Purple influence detectable both in the vocal lines and in the sound, since production duties were handed to Roger Glover, who on this occasion proves disappointing, muffling the guitars and rhythm section. Among the more successful tracks, by now numbered among the classics of the Priest catalogue, are driving, charismatic numbers like "Sinner" or "Dissident Aggressor", on which it's above all Halford who shines, confirming himself as one of the most expressive and intense rock singers of the 70s. "Here Come the Tears" lives a life of its own, an experimental, atmospheric track that's a masterpiece of intensity and contrition on a par with Nick Cave's work. The main success, however, is "Diamonds And Rust", a fine cover of Joan Baez.

Stained Class (1978) completely changes the rules of the game at this point, establishing what would become the Judas Priest sound of the Eighties, capable of influencing, more or less directly, anyone who approached metal or hard rock at the time. The opening "Exciter" alone, fast and powerful, is a landmark track. No less so the vicious "White Heat, Red Hot", which sets a good number of other clichés in stone. More than being simply beautiful songs, as on Sad Wings of Destiny, these are formally important ones. The epic echoes of "Stained Class" would be felt all the way to King Diamond and the epic-metal of the Nineties; "Saints In Hell" updates Black Sabbath's unwholesome rituals in its own way; "Savage" pushes hard on the pedal of heaviness, and the long "Beyond The Realms Of Death" harks back to "Victim Of Changes", trading some of its charm for sheer force.

The same year saw the release of Killing Machine (the American version came out in 1979 under the title "Hell Bent For Leather"), another solid and inspired work, and, for its time, genuinely incendiary on every front. Worth noting are the steamrolling "Delivering The Goods", "Hell Bent For Leather" with its grotesque, almost rap-like vocal delivery, the dark masterpiece "Evil Fantasies", and the arena anthem "Take On The World". The semi-acoustic ballad "Before The Dawn" would set the template for the crosses and delights of countless metal albums right up to the present day.

British Steel (1980), the sixth album in five years, has little to add to the aesthetic achievements consolidated across the previous three records, which had consisted of the move from the fullest refinement of the 70s sound ("Sad Wings Of Destiny") to the founding of the 80s one — a sound partly disowned by genre avant-gardists like Iron Maiden and Metallica. Now, the epic quality that had characterized "Sad Wings Of Destiny" is set aside for a context — in sound as in lyrics — that's pure rock'n'roll. From here on, throughout the Eighties, the Downing/Halford/Tipton trio would take the upper hand over Tipton — who had held it in the 70s — in songwriting.

The masterpieces are: "Breaking The Law", with one of the most granite-solid and memorable riffs in history and a grandiose repetition of the title just as metalheads like it; "United", an irresistible arena anthem capable of founding a cult of followers all on its own; "The Rage", a peak of malice and perversion — without ever forgetting, as a rule, the darkest and blackest side of things — now chiming, now exploding. The other tracks are: "Rapid Fire", a nearly thrash-speed whirl (Motorhead); "Metal Gods", the quintessence — in intent, since in form (just listen to the chorus) we're at "vocal-group" levels — of the uncritical devotion to the genre championed by Judas Priest — hence our own Italian "Gods of Metal"; "Grinder", syncopation upon syncopation yet again, reducible once more to a monstrous blues; "Living After Midnight", a track entirely inspired by the previous decade's Kiss; "You Don't Have to Be Old to Be Wise", nothing new under the sun — an encyclopedia of fifteen years of hard rock; "Steeler", square-jawed and powerful street- or fight-ready hard rock, with towering guitar riffs.

Point Of Entry (1981) is to the start of the Eighties what Sin After Sin had been to the whole of the Seventies: a transitional album. The problem here, though, is that in this new decade, rich in glory and acclaim for the band, the tide turns, so that within an enormous mass of mediocrity, the only misstep seems to be the one taken, in 1982, in the direction of good music.

If Sad Wings Of Destiny is the best Judas Priest album of the 70s, Screaming For Vengeance (No. 17 in the US) is the best of the 80s, as well as the peak of that trajectory — downhill from here on — and of that sound set in motion four years earlier with Stained Class (running parallel to the band's emancipation from Black Sabbath). It's the prototype of classic metal, still greased with hard rock and not as pure as Iron Maiden's, classic metal representing the alternative strand to Metallica's heavy metal — and all its subgenres. The masterpieces are: the intro "The Hellion", a mirror image of Iron Maiden's contemporaneous "The Ides Of March", with which it vies for the granite-hard, dark epos that defines them both; "Electric Eye", with three opening riffs among the most devastating and visceral in the whole history of rock (somewhere between "Breaking The Law" and Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love") — it then proceeds in typically artificial 80s fashion, but steeped in existentialism; "Pain And Pleasure", swampy, slow and thoroughly depraved — not least because of its melody — a ritual of damnation. The other tracks are: "Riding On The Wind", of great structure and delivered with the swagger of a possessed soul singer; "Bloodstone", which after an Eddie Van Halen-style flourish, drops into a murky tunnel that still manages to open onto brighter spaces (the melody); "(Take These) Chains", a track of clear hard rock lineage, embodying all the appeal potential of the genre; "Screaming For Vengeance", the track that's finally heavy and finally genuinely fast — a quality that would prove nothing less than foundational for Guns n' Roses; "You've Got Another Thing Comin'", too Def Leppard-like in its opening, irresistible in the verse leading into the chorus, which however ends up self-satisfied and rather crude; "Fever", a flawless ballad flavoured with childhood and abandonment, with a chorus that would be unthinkable today — so thoroughly synthetic is it; "Devil's Child", Judas Priest's old habit of compromising themselves with Ac/Dc — by this point in their career, truly stale.

On Defenders Of The Faith (1984) the band reasserts itself among the leading lights of heavy metal, trying to live up to the standards it helped establish while also winking at speed metal. "Jawbreaker", the Accept-esque "Freewheel Burning", "Heavy Duty", "Rock Hard Ride Free", "The Sentinel" and the title track are the standout numbers, tracks now among the band's classics. Also strong is the measured build of "Night Comes Down", with a dark tread — if by now a familiar one — typical of the band's best years. On tracks like "Love Bites" we hear the birth and death of a synthetic sound fashionable at the time, one that would find fuller expression on the following record. "Some Heads Are Gonna Roll", on the other hand, is an awkward stab at the epic, proof of just how easily and readily the band let itself be seduced by the commercial potential of its own work. But it doesn't upset the album's overall balance.

Two years later came Turbo (1986), on which, in thrall to synthesizers, Judas Priest flirt — perhaps a touch too opportunistically — with pop-metal, glam-metal and new wave. The lyrics, too, change considerably, leaning more towards love and romance. It's an anomalous album that split the fanbase in two at the time, full of highly catchy tracks and several driving hits, but a world away from the taste and attitude of heavy metal. Old-school metal fans still look down on it today, but for Judas Priest it would remain their best-selling album until 2005.

Ram It Down (1988) shifts the balance back from pop towards the heavy metal of Defenders Of The Faith; the problem is that the resulting sound is tremendously dated. "Ram It Down", for instance, is instrumentally solid, in the Motorhead mould; it's Halford's voice, in style and tone, that doesn't work: the voice that forged the band's finest songs is now lost and aimless: it could embrace the genres it helped bring into being, from progressive to epic, but it can't, because the band still has no identity in any direction. The same goes for "Heavy Metal": interesting ideas on the instrumental side that go nowhere, and a Halford who starts doing an Ozzy Osbourne impression. "Hard As Iron", meanwhile, does an impression of Helloween.

When it comes to song titles, lyrics, artwork, the band's look and so on, here more than ever we want to believe it's all deliberately inane, adolescent and dumb, a mere pretext for the music, regardless of whether that music turns out to be any good. If that's not the case, we'd be looking at one of the most damaging examples in the entire history of rock.

Painkiller (1990) is Judas Priest's last great parting shot. The best album since Screaming For Vengeance, good enough to erase the memory of all the mediocre records in between, it practically sounds like a different band. Now they sound the way bands sound in the year the record came out. In fact, this is the only truly metal album Judas Priest ever made. Before this, even in their finest moments, the band had always retained a whiff of hard rock. Now, that duality between metal and hard rock that had always defined their sound is tipped entirely in favor of the former. Thanks to new drummer Scott Travis's double bass and guitars as squared-off as heavy metal demands, the album breathes Halford's dark-epic voice into structures that borrow heavily from the most fashionable genres of the day, as if the fathers, with some embarrassment about their age, were taking lessons from their children, while still bringing their own experience and lived-in charisma to the table. Essentially, this music can be defined as "power metal," in the same sense the term is used for Helloween: "Painkiller" is exemplary in this respect. The songwriting isn't anything special: there are no truly great songs here. The point, though, that makes this record unique lies in the imagination, the fury and the hunger of the performance; it really does manage to make you forget what's being played in favor of a how that operates at the highest level. While very much in line with a thousand other records of its era, it still manages to stand out from the pack. For the reasons stated, it's hard to single out one track as better or more representative than another. "Hell Patrol" and "One Shot At Glory" are certainly tours de force of huge impact: the former boasts top-class progressive guitar runs, the latter riffs chopped up by bursts of drumming. Various ghosts are summoned here and there: from Iron Maiden ("Between The Hammer & The Anvil"), to Accept, to Manowar ("Battle Hymn" — not just for the title) and Mercyful Fate ("Metal Meltdown"), all the way to Diamond Head; all of them, however, well digested. There are also tracks that seem rhetorical on the surface but are actually, perhaps partly thanks to the production, somewhat anomalous, like "A Touch Of Evil," whose keyboards largely anticipate, for instance, Stratovarius.

Painkiller is an encyclopedia of Nineties metal, carrying the feel of a Luciferian past along with premonitions of certain future metal directions.

In '91 Halford leaves the band. Judas Priest release, slowly and laboriously, two albums with singer Tim Owens. Jugulator (1997) and Demolition (2001) offer atmospheric heavy metal, sterile and stuffed with filler, but at least brought up to date with more modern sounds (flirting with groove metal) and with a retro undertow that doesn't hurt. While the most embarrassing moments are musty ballads like "Cathedral Spires," there's no shortage of fired-up, well-placed twists and turns, good enough to pass as a kind of prepackaged music for the metal supermarket. The second album then puts forward a whole series of ambitions meant to move beyond the genre's conformism. "Subterfuge" or "Machine Man," for instance, come close to the Metallica of "Load."

In 2005 comes Angel Of Retribution, with the original lineup (Halford, Downing, Tipton). It's a tribute album to the glories of the past, with gripping tracks (the impetuous, frantic "Hellrider," the stereotyped yet moving power ballad "Angel," the doom-metal finale of "Lochness") alternating with a few more anonymous ones, overall enjoyable, powerful, gripping and atmospheric. These are songs that show a band regaining its form after the previous lackluster efforts, between razor-sharp solos, powerful riffs, charismatic vocal lines and driving rhythms.

Unfortunately, 2008 brings us Nostradamus, one of the band's worst albums, which, aside from a handful of enjoyable tracks, offers an overall package lacking in substance, riddled with bombastic stylistic clichés. The addition of symphonic-metal elements, like evocative keyboards and background choirs, might sound interesting on paper, but the result actually comes off as gaudy and pompous. The excessive runtime (102 minutes) also makes for a heavy listen. The intention (manager Bill Curbishley's, who came up with the idea) was for the album to be a deep, melodramatic, elaborate concept piece, but the band is clearly not comfortable in that role.

In 2011 guitarist K.K. Downing leaves the band after many years at the top, replaced by Richie Faulkner.

The first album without founding member Downing is Redeemer Of Souls, released in 2014, but once again the result is too bland. The band copies itself and fails to find the right recipe to deliver even just enjoyable, catchy songs; the tracks, moreover, are played wearily, on autopilot, and lack much of the executive skill the band usually displays. Making matters worse is the mediocre production. Unable either to effectively reinvent itself or to nail the songwriting, for many years now it has seemed as if the Birmingham outfit has nothing left to say (with the sole exception of the 2005 triumph).

At this point, who would ever expect a band officially formed way back in 1969 to still be putting out records in 2018, let alone manage to pull off a late-career triumph by offering something worthwhile after so many mediocre releases? Yet Firepower, arriving in 2018, surprisingly works: there's grit, there's pathos, there's carefully crafted songwriting, there are gripping riffs and razor-sharp solos the likes of which hadn't been heard since 2006. It's a formulaic record, one that leads straight back to the band's golden era, and it can come across as a bit predictable in both music and lyrics, so it will bore anyone looking for innovation. It may sound out of step with the rest of the scene, but you wouldn't expect anything else from veterans like Judas Priest, and the songs win you over regardless. Repeating this feat may well be impossible at such an advanced age, and this record plays like a swan song, a final flourish of class in a career dotted with both great triumphs and very difficult moments.

In Invincible Shield (2024) the band is technically in great shape, but the album can't help but come across as an endless rehash of clichés heard one too many times, with countless self-quotations, some of them frankly unbelievable. It's genuinely bizarre that the chorus of "Panic Attack" is practically identical to that of the legendary track that started it all for heavy metal, "Breaking The Law," but similar situations (perhaps less obvious ones) could probably be spotted just about everywhere. Many speed tracks ("The Serpent And The King," "As God Is My Business") are enjoyable enough for die-hard metalheads, but anyone looking for the occasional flash of innovation will find the album all too repetitive and decidedly too long.

It's also true that expecting any particular evolution from the, however celebrated, Judas Priest (never truly cutting-edge the way Iron Maiden or Metallica, their direct offspring, were) would have been a mistake.

Contributions by Alessandro Mattedi ("Turbo," "Angel Of Retribution," "Nostradamus," "Redeemer Of Souls," "Firepower"), Valerio D'Onofrio ("Invincible Shield")

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