Judas Priest

As with other bands that have exerted a particular influence on the development of popular music and built a career spanning several decades, it's hard to pinpoint the most important album by Judas Priest. One could point to a Seventies title, when the metal component had not yet fully broken away from hard rock and its blues-driven charge, in works with a dark soul such as “Sad Wings Of Destiny”, “Sin After Sin” and “Stained Class”, or choose among the Eighties records, those “Screaming For Vengeance” and “Defenders Of The Faith” with their now gleaming heavy metal forging. One could even venture as far as 1990's “Painkiller”, with which the Birmingham band proved it could go toe to toe with the whole new generation of metal bands raised under its own banner. One thing, however, is certain: which Judas Priest album has, more than any other, shaped the imagery of heavy metal, for musical as much as extra-musical reasons — “British Steel”.

Max Cavalera (Sepultura, Soulfly) has no doubts: “In this record you can find all the foundations of thrash metal, they're all there, in songs like 'Rapid Fire' and 'Grinder'. I'm sure you could ask Metallica — if it wasn't for 'British Steel', they wouldn't be here, that's how powerful that record is”.

Scott Ian (Anthrax) shares the same view, having even stated in an interview that it's the record that defined the very concept of heavy metal.

While the sound itself could be debated (even without going as far back as Black Sabbath, there were already Rainbow, and Judas Priest themselves had already been moving in that direction), visually there's no arguing: just look up some Judas Priest performances from the era on YouTube and heavy metal is all right there.

The studded leather waistcoats (with their clear S&M heritage) worn like a uniform, the swallow-tail electric guitars played by K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton in formation as if choreographed, Rob Halford's feral crowd-rousing, his overpowering stage presence, Ian Hill and Dave Holland pounding bass and drums with a fury rarely seen before.

With its full iconographic package, “British Steel” inaugurates a methodology made of ritual live shows, merchandising and iconic artwork that would underpin numerous metal sagas to come (just ask Iron Maiden as much as Megadeth).

When Columbia poured the sixth Judas Priest album onto record store shelves worldwide in April 1980, it delivered something that, even before being a great record, could be called a cult object — starting with the title and the cover art. The title is an ironic nod to the British Steel Corporation, where guitarist Glenn Tipton had in fact worked for five years, but above all it's a statement of intent: Judas Priest wanted to brand, and would indeed brand, the British heavy metal scene with a hot iron. The cover, meanwhile, immortalizes a hand brandishing an enormous razor blade (specially made, since Photoshop wouldn't be born for decades) bearing the album title and the band's logo.

To find something even more iconic, all you need to do is press play and get literally run over by the relentless buzz of the guitar riff, followed by the war-like drum roll of "Rapid Fire". It's the end of the world, and Halford sings, at times growls, as if leading an assault on what's left of humanity. It's an incredibly fast, direct track, designed to disorient anyone expecting the band's usual epic intro.

The epic quality isn't long in coming, arriving with the next track, tellingly titled "Metal Gods". Amid whip-crack rhythms, hefty riffs with a marching gait and a chorus with an almost sacred intonation, Halford keeps dwelling on post-apocalyptic visions that, in this case, seem to anticipate by nearly five years the ideas behind James Cameron's celebrated film "Terminator". Infectious and, once again, iconic, the track has a title that in the decades to come would become common currency at gatherings and within metalhead culture.

These are just the run-up to a string of metal classics that has few equals. Recorded in December 1979 in a suitably epic location, Tittenhurst Park — the estate owned by Ringo Starr and formerly belonging to Yoko Ono and John Lennon, where the latter wrote and recorded "Imagine" — "British Steel" somehow seems to absorb the grandeur of English chart rock and bend it to the punishing sound gradually developed since "Sad Wings Of Destiny". After the album's release, Rob Halford would admit that the European tour supporting AC/DC a few months earlier had a huge influence on the more direct, crowd-rousing approach used in writing and recording the new songs.

This new approach is certainly embodied by the album's third track, "Breaking The Law". The song responsible for Judas Priest's definitive commercial breakthrough remains to this day one of heavy metal's most famous and beloved anthems. The simple riff, channeling pure, raw energy, seems never to end, the rhythm section is frantic and clattering, and Halford, foaming with rage, incites listeners to social rebellion. Written shortly after Margaret Thatcher's election as UK prime minister, the song is narrated in the first person by a young worker who has just lost his job and, numbed by that as much as by the ordinariness of working-class life, starts breaking the law. Heavy metal, then, but also carrying a strong social charge with an anarchic instinct that borders directly on punk. The song's success was aided by its now-legendary video, in which the band robs a bank armed only with their guitars.

The album keeps roaring with social critique on the following "Grinder", an even darker track that, with its bulldozing 4/4 rhythm and relentless guitar riffs, takes aim at a society that grinds people down like a meat mincer: "Grinder/ Looking for meat/ Grinder/ Wants you to eat". Politics and corporations don't just treat individuals as meat to be minced, swallowed and spat back out — they also force those who are different to live in secrecy.

After coming out (which only happened in 1998), Rob Halford revealed that the song also secretly speaks to the sexual tension he experienced as a closeted gay man, terrified of how his fans would react if he came out. In reality, once he did come out, Halford received the full support of his fans and went on to become a source of inspiration and comfort for the entire LGBT community within the metal world.

"United" splits the album in two, closing out side one with a track softer than those preceding it, written, played and sung to bring the crowd together. Once again Halford looks at the effects of Margaret Thatcher's conservative government on society's weakest, and with the chorus he seems to want to embrace and support them: "United, united, united we stand/ United we never shall fall/ United, united, united we stand/ United we stand one and all". A genuine classic and the album's final single, the song also draws on the British press's lack of interest in metal at the time, almost entirely focused on punk, becoming a heartfelt call for metalheads across the UK and the world to come together as a community and step into the spotlight. Extremely catchy and hummable, "United" soon also became a fixture of English football chants.

Opening side two of the vinyl are the two most radio-friendly tracks of the bunch, in which the metal edge is smoothed out in favor of an infectious, playful hard rock. The first is "You Don't Have To Be Old To Be Wise": a three-chord riff provides the drive, a jaunty lead guitar embroiders the background, and Halford screams the title, stretching it out like a lethal mantra. With a lighter touch, the outcasts are once again the protagonists, urged not to care about anyone who thinks them stupid just because they dress in black, wear their hair long and are young.

Born almost by accident, "Living After Midnight" is even more cheerful and lighthearted. One night between recording sessions, Halford was trying to get a few hours' sleep when, at four in the morning, Tipton started ringing out through the vast spaces of Tittenhurst Park a riff that would soon become legendary. Now wide awake, Rob thundered at him: "You're living after midnight down here, you are!" "Well, that sounds like a great title for a song", was Tipton's reply. No sooner said than done: the next day the band put together one of the most overplayed songs in their catalogue, an immortal anthem for the nocturnal escapades and revelry of every self-respecting rock star.

It's followed by "Rage", a rather atypical track by their standards. In the first 40 seconds, Holland and Hill lay down a swaggering reggae rhythm, joined by Tipton's spirited guitar. It's an intro, and then an interlude, disorienting, but designed only to fire the metallic engines back up moments later and unleash K.K. Downing's stunning riff with even more ferocity on listeners' ears. Later in the song, Downing again takes the chance to indulge his passion for old-school rock and the blues of Free or Gary Moore.

It's no coincidence, on the other hand, that so many future metal stars name the closing "Steeler" as their favorite track. Among them is the late Dimebag Darrell of Pantera, who saw in the hardest track on "British Steel" a true guiding star. Holland's drumming is thunderous, Halford goes back to snarling fiercely, and Tipton and Downing's riffs and solos give no quarter, coming in sharp, furious and razor-edged succession, leaving behind grooves that would sow the seeds for speed and thrash metal to come.

Worth noting are the special effects requested by producer Tom Allom (formerly a sound engineer for Black Sabbath and producer of Strawbs), who resorted to homemade but, for the time, effective tricks — recordings of breaking materials, sirens and engine roars — to add context and atmosphere to the violence of the performances.

The album's impact was immediate, first with its entry at number 4 on the British charts (still Judas Priest's best result at home to this day), then with the long-sought breakthrough on the American market: on 12 July 1980 it reached number 34 on the Billboard chart (opening the door to a long run of Top 40 entries), and a couple of years later it earned the band its first gold record certified by the RIAA (later upgraded to platinum in 1989).

"British Steel" is essentially the quintessence of the leather-clad, studded heavy metal we picture when we think of that era. It's one of the albums to start with when venturing into that dark, deafening forest called metal.

(Contributions and overall editing by Federico Romagnoli)

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17/07/2022