Judas Priest

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Essential Albums

  • Painkiller (Bonus Track Version)
    Painkiller (Bonus Track Version)
    Painkiller (Bonus Track Version)

    Judas Priest spent most of the late ‘80s trying to catch a wave into the pop-metal mainstream, stretching their sound without covering meaningful new ground. Fast, mean and relentless, Painkiller was reinvention by regression, stripping out the synths and arena-rock flourishes of albums like Turbo in favour of the thrash and speed metal that brought them to prominence in the first place. Fierce as it is, the album also has a camp approach that keeps things from ever feeling too self-serious, whether it’s Rob Halford wailing about boiling clouds of thunder on the title track or the operatic drama of “Touch of Evil”. In other words, the metal one thinks of when they think of—horns up—metal.

  • Defenders of the Faith (Bonus Track Version)
    Defenders of the Faith (Bonus Track Version)
    Defenders of the Faith (Bonus Track Version)

    1984

  • Screaming for Vengeance (Special 30th Anniversary Edition)
    Screaming for Vengeance (Special 30th Anniversary Edition)
    Screaming for Vengeance (Special 30th Anniversary Edition)

    There isn’t a Judas Priest fan anywhere that doesn’t recognise “The Hellion”, the opening track from Screaming for Vengeance. Not long after the album’s release in the summer of 1982, the majestic 40-second instrumental became the band’s walk-on music. The album then segues immediately into road-ready ripper “Electric Eye”, a song steeped in pinched harmonics and lyrical allusions to George Orwell’s surveillance-state classic Nineteen Eighty-Four. Recorded in Ibiza, Spain, Screaming for Vengeance is the album that made Priest superstars. The instant heavy metal anthem “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” exploded all over MTV less than a year after the network made its debut in American homes, sending Priest’s profile into the stratosphere. Driven by Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing’s slashing guitar chords, and Rob Halford’s lyrics about resilience in the face of obstacles, it’s easily one of Priest’s most recognisable songs. Oddly enough, it was a last-minute addition to the album, as evidenced by its number-eight slot on the 10-song album. Given Priest’s leather-daddy stage gear—not to mention lyrics about dogs on leashes—"Pain and Pleasure” might seem like an S&M song, but it’s probably about a tumultuous relationship. Or maybe both. Any way you slice it, it’s a hot cut. “Bloodstone” is another underrated gem. Is it about blood diamonds? Shady dealings? Who cares? Halford is in top form, and the guitars move with the style and sheen of a Ferrari advert. The title track is the kind of proto-thrash that anticipated Metallica and Slayer. The blacktop-shredder “Riding on the Wind” is the first of Halford’s odes to his rock-star hobby: riding motorcycles. “Fever” and “Devil’s Child”, meanwhile, don’t get nearly as much props as they should—on any other album, they would’ve been hit singles. “(Take These) Chains”, credited to Bob Halligan, Jr, is the first song written for Priest by an outside songwriter. Moody and anthemic, the song caught the ear of many high-profile musicians, as Halligan went on to write songs for Blue Öyster Cult, Kiss and Cher. Rightly hailed as a heavy metal masterpiece, Screaming for Vengeance was so successful that Priest used the same template for their next album, Defenders of the Faith.

  • British Steel (Bonus Track Version)
    British Steel (Bonus Track Version)
    British Steel (Bonus Track Version)

    It’s hard to believe that 1980’s British Steel is Judas Priest’s sixth album. Though the band helped define heavy metal in the 1970s—aided in the effort by peers Black Sabbath—it wasn’t until British Steel that Judas Priest finally exploded into the rock mainstream—thanks in no small part to the popularity of the now-classic metal anthems “Breaking the Law” and “Living After Midnight”. Priest credit the immediacy of these songs to producer Tom Allom, who had engineered Sabbath’s first three albums. “Tom helped us cut away all the stuff that wasn’t relevant,” vocalist Rob Halford tells Apple Music. “That’s why there’s no excessive fluff, no wandering around. There’s a real craftsmanship to it. In many ways, British Steel has been like a template for a lot of other metal musicians to see how you get the job done efficiently.” “Rapid Fire”, which opens the original UK edition of the album, is the oft-overlooked track here. The machine-gun riffs of guitarists Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing are in keeping with the title, as Halford invokes cannons and hammers—all while talking about “pounding the world like a battering ram”. Though the title of “Metal Gods” seems like a bit of well-deserved self-proclamation, the song was actually inspired by H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds: “I love the book, the film and the British TV version of it—and the way it’s been reimagined by so many people,” says Halford. The clanking noises heard towards the end of the song were made by trays of cutlery taken from the drawers of Tittenhurst Park, home of former Beatle Ringo Starr, where British Steel was recorded. “It was Ringo’s house, so it was probably his cutlery,” Priest bassist Ian Hill says drily. “Next thing you know, Tom is picking this stuff up and dropping it in front of the mic. I remember him smashing milk bottles for ‘Breaking the Law’ as well.” Released as the album’s second single, “Breaking the Law” encapsulated the bleak socioeconomic climate of Britain at the time it was written. “It was a tough time in the UK in the middle and late 1970s,” says Halford. “There was a tremendous amount of social upheaval in the country. Nobody really liked what Margaret Thatcher was doing. The trash men were on strike, the steelworkers were on strike, the coal workers were on strike. Kids were coming out of school with no jobs to go to. We’d watch the news and there’d be fights going on between police on horseback riding through demonstrators in London, knocking people over—and Molotov cocktails being thrown at government buildings. So, the social angst and frustration is very prominent in ‘Breaking the Law’.” Elsewhere on British Steel, “United” is a Queen-esque football chant in the style of Hell Bent for Leather’s “Take On the World”, complete with handclaps and stadium stomps. “This song definitely has a stance of us against them: We’ve got to be united and stick together,” says Halford. “It’s a song of solidarity more than anything else. It was picked up by football clubs with the word ‘United’ in their name, like Blackburn United and Manchester United. They’d play it at the matches and fans would be screaming along.” The outsider lyrics of “Grinder” took on a new meaning when Halford came out of the closest in 1998, but the slamming power chords and monster beat are as sharp as they were back in 1980. And “The Rage” is the oddball track, with a reggae-like intro that sounds out of place on a metal record. “Out of all the songs on the album, this one is probably my favourite—mainly because of that funky beginning,” says Hill. “It just makes it a little bit different from the rest of the tracks on there. They said they wanted an intro, so I suggested a Latin beat and then I came up with that funky bit. The funniest thing is, I’m usually allergic to that kind of music. I’d come out with a rash. But it all stemmed from that off-beat thing—not playing on the beat.” British Steel’s lead single was “Living After Midnight”. Released a week before the album itself, the song announced the beginning of new era for Priest—and for heavy metal in general. “Glenn Tipton woke me up in the middle of the night playing the chord sequence that would become this song,” recalls Halford. “That’s where the name comes from. It’s a rock ’n’ roll song about a band coming into town and leaving you at dawn. When we play the song live, no matter where we are in the world, the room just lifts up and the fans go wild. It’s like we’re taking you on a time machine back to 1980, and you’re out partying with your friends.”

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About Judas Priest

Judas Priest have had a profound influence on countless hard-rock and metal subgenres. Anchored by leather-clad vocalist Rob Halford’s wicked screams and a propulsive guitar attack, the Birmingham group inspired both homegrown movements (the late-’70s New Wave of British Heavy Metal) and global phenomena (thrash metal and its poppier cousin, hair metal). Formed in 1969, Judas Priest took a few years to find their footing, but they settled on a lineup featuring Halford, guitarists K. K. Downing and Glenn Tipton and bassist Ian Hill for their 1974 debut single, “Rocka Rolla”. A major-label record deal raised the band’s profile considerably, leading to their 1980 breakthrough, British Steel—which featured the confrontational “Breaking the Law” and “Living After Midnight”—and 1982’s Screaming for Vengeance, home to the defiant “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’”. Judas Priest continued to enjoy mainstream success throughout the decade and beyond, thanks to 1990’s turbocharged Painkiller. In a rarity for the metal world, Halford came out as gay in 1998, a revelation that underscored that the black-leather metalhead image Judas Priest had helped popularise was also Halford’s nod to gay leather-bar culture. Over the years, the group have weathered multiple lineup changes—Downing and Tipton retired from the band in 2011 and 2018, respectively—but they remain a creative force, with 2018’s Firepower becoming a Top 10 album all over the world.

ORIGIN
Birmingham, England
FORMED
1969
GENRE
Metal

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