Welcome to another “Album by Album Challenge.” For those that are new here, the “Album by Album Challenge” is where I take a band’s entire discography and listen to every album in order of release from front to back. With my unforgiving and well-aged ear, I call it how I hear it. In some cases, I find that what I once thought was good is actually pretty crappy and sometimes crap manages to age into something pretty kick ass. And in some cases, face melting is still just good ol’ face melting.
This time around we have a two parter as we dive into the Judas Priest discography. For over nearly four decades Judas Priest has been synonymous with heavy metal but like most Priest fans my age, I feel like I only know about ½ of this band’s amazingly long and influential career. My first album was Defenders of the Faith and while I worked my way back I never went further back than British Steel. This challenge was a really exciting one with plenty of pleasant (and unpleasant) surprises.
In Part II we’ll be picking things up with 1984’s legendary Defenders of the Faith and concluding with the newly released “Redeemer of Souls.” This era of Priest is some murky waters so heading into this was a bit scary. Well, how did I fair in part II? Read on brothers and sisters. Read on.
Defenders of the Faith
Release Date: January 4, 1984
The Good: Freewheel Burning, Jawbreaker, Rock Hard Ride Free, The Sentinel, Love Bites, Eat Me Alive, Some Heads Are Gonna Roll, Night Comes Down, Heavy Duty, Defenders of the Faith
The Bad:
The Indifferent:
As of hearing this album, Defenders of the Faith is without a doubt my favorite post-proggy Priest album by far. The first thing I thought when I started listening to this album was, “How great was this album?” Well, “Freewheel Burning” kicked in and fucking killed my face. The production of this album is so fucking massive and I feel like that THIS is probably the best sounding Priest album to date as far as production. This album sounds like a fucking arena band if that makes any sense. It’s so huge sounding and Halford’s vocals are absolutely stratospheric.
Defenders of the Faith is also responsible for turning out some of Priest’s most classic tracks. “The Sentinel”, “Love Bites”, “Some Heads are Gonna Roll.” All of these songs sound just as amazing now as they did back when I was 11 years old but, again, it’s the deeper tracks that I found to be truly outstanding and way more that I remembered them being. “Night Comes Down” was without a doubt the standout track for me but goddamn if “Jawbreaker” isn’t a faceripper if I ever heard one. Closing with “Heavy Duty/Defenders of the Faith” sounds like how you would expect a huge ass arena show to close out. It totally leaves you wanting more which I always say is a sign of a truly great album.
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Turbo
Release Date: April 15, 1986
The Good:Out In The Cold,
The Bad:Turbo Lover, Locked In,Private Property, Parental Guidance, Rock You All Around The World, Wild Nights, Hot & Crazy Days, Hot For Love, Reckless
The Indifferent:
Wow. I mean, wow. What the hell happened here? It’s like, I can’t even put my finger one why Priest thought this album was a good idea. The only thing I can think of is that they were a band of old dudes trying to keep up with the changing scope of hard rock and metal music. Instead of just sticking to their guns they totally jumped into the side of the pool where all the other guys were swimming and tried to become one of them. Surprisingly it really worked for them because this was a really successful album and tour for them. I thought this album was cool as fuck in ’86 but with every passing year it just got more and more ridiculous sounding.
“Private Property”, “Parental Guidance”, “Rock You All Around The World”? I mean, how much more asinine can you get? Oh wait. “Wild Nights, Hot & Crazy Days.” Yup, THAT’S how much more asinine you can get. I really went into this album hoping that maybe enough time had passed that I might possibly find some redeeming quality to this album and the only thing I was able to come up with was “Out in the Cold.” That is a fantastic song and probably one of the coolest Priest live show openers. Aside from that one, this album is just a huge miss. They really loved this album because on this tour they did more material from this one than they ever did from a new album on any other tour. Funny because now they just completely ignore it. See? Even Priest figured it out later on that this album was just one big ass bowl of fail.
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Ram it Down
Release Date: May 17, 1988
The Good: Ram It Down, Heavy Metal, Come and Get It, Hard as Iron, Blood Red Skies, I’m A Rocker, Love You To Death,
The Bad: Love Zone, Johnny B. Goode, Monster of Rock
The Indifferent:
Wow. Ok. I was TOTALLY shocked by how much I actually dug this fucking album. It’s funny how shit like this happens. When Turbo came out I loved it and now I hate it. When Ram It Down was released I remember not liking it but now I listen to this album and its pretty fucking rad. Here’s the deal. The songs are corny as fuck but the thing is here that they’re actually really well done. This is without a doubt the heaviest Priest album up to this point. This is album is so heavy but one particular thing really stood out to me: the drumming. It’s funny because I had to look up on the wiki page because I thought to myself, “Dave Holland plays these drums unlike I’ve ever heard him play.” Well, it turns out they used a drum machine. HAHA. Well, I’ll give them credit in that I was totally fooled. Good job Priest!
The title track is fucking killer and I have to say that “Hard as Iron” just may be one of the best fucking Priest songs out there along with Blood Red Skies. What an amazing chorus and hook in that song and another song that I feel should be a staple. There really is no middle ground on this album. It’s either awesome or it’s “Love Zone”, “Johnny B. Goode” and “Monster of Rock.” That last song just may be one of the dumbest songs in the history of metal. This album really had a lot of promise but towards the end it just spiraled out of control crashing and burning with “Monster of Rock.” Talk about going out with a thud. Ram it Down does have some pretty strong tracks that I will be adding to a playlist but as a whole, this album doesn’t really hit the mark; it misses it by “that” much.
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Painkiller
Release Date: September 3, 1990
The Good: Painkiller, Night Crawler, Between the Hammer & the Anvil, A Touch of Evil, One Shot at Glory
The Bad:
The Indifferent: Hell Patrol, All Guns Blazing, Leather Rebel,
I still remember this album like it was yesterday. The band was coming off of this really intense court case where some burn out dopehead dropouts blew their faces off listening to “Stained Class.” It was a really intense time for metal music and Priest was all over the news. When Painkiller was released, I remember an ad reading, “Painkiller: Awesome backwards or forwards.” I remember this album being so fucking heavy and thinking that it was such a monumental album for Priest. I saw them twice on this tour and it was their biggest stage production to date and this was probably the last great Priest tour.
Listening to this album in full for the first time in over 20 years was pretty cool but I was a bit shocked actually. The surprising thing about listening to this album was that I didn’t find it nearly as awesome as I remember it being back in ’90. There aren’t really any bad songs but the ones that are “indifferent” are completely forgettable. The title track is still as awesome as it ever was but I really found myself loving “Between the Hammer & The Anvil” but it was the album closer “One Shot at Glory” that stood out as the highlight. This could’ve been an Iron Maiden song. Yeah, I feel like it’s that fucking good and it just may be one of my new favorite Priest songs. As a whole, the album lacks consistency but there are some really great fucking gems on this one. The good songs are way too good to pass up so I’d say owning this album is worth it even for the three songs that are just “meh.”
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Jugulator
Release Date: October 28, 1997
The Good:
The Bad: Jugulator, Blood Stained, Dead Meat, Death Row, Decapitate, Burn in Hell, Brain Dead, Abductors, Bullet Train, Cathedral Spires
The Indifferent:
You know how when you hear a band and you say, “This sounds like so and so but not nearly as good”? Well, imagine saying that only to find out that THIS is the band you thought some other band was trying to kind of sound like. That’s pretty much the best way I can describe this platter of warm dung. Rob Halford sang in Priest for 20 years at this point and had such a distinct, definitive voice. So when he decided to bow out, what did the band do? They picked a guy who sang in a Priest cover and sounded “kind of” like Halford. FAIL.
Jugulator just sounds like an old band trying way too fucking hard to keep up with youngsters of metal and with this singer who kinda sounds like the old guy. What? Did you not think we’d figure this out? The songs on this one are just forced and damn near impossible to listen. “Whoa no, I don’t wanna go. You’ll never get me down to Death Row.” Really? Poetic genius. This album is just flat out painful. I can’t wait to hear this amazing follow up. Please let me out of here.
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Demolition
Release Date: July 31, 2001
The Good:
The Bad: Demolition, One on One, Hell is Home, Jekyll & Hyde, Close to You, Devil Digger, Bloodsuckers, In Between, Feed on Me, Subterfuge, Lost and Found, Cyberface, Metal Messiah
The Indifferent:
Wow. I can’t even begin to tell you how fucking happy I was when this album was over. I had never listened to either of these Ripper era albums and after sitting through them I can fucking see why. Matter of fact, I wish I could get that time back that I lost listening to them. There were times where this album was truly so fucking bad that I had to leave the room and go take a dump or get a snack or something. First off, we can’t really blame Ripper for the shitty songwriting as that was mostly Tipton’s fault. Song for song this album just blew. No, it didn’t blow me away. It just blew. Period.
There’s really not much more to say about these two albums with Ripper Owens other than that they remind me of the two shitty albums Blaze Bayley did with Iron Maiden. Ripper’s a good singer but he’s a terrible singer for Judas Priest. There was absolutely nothing redeeming about either of these albums so it’s no wonder that they all pretty much begged Halford to come back.
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Angel of Retribution
Release Date: February 28, 2005
The Good: Deal with the Devil, Demonizer,
The Bad: Revolution, Worth Fighting For, Angel, Hellrider, Lochness
The Indifferent: Judas Rising, Wheels of Fire, Eulogy,
So Halford returns to the fold and the first thing they give us right out of the gates is an album full of ridiculously horrible songs and two really good ones. I found it funny that when I heard “Deal with the Devil” I thought, “This is a great song” only to find that it was written by Roy Z (Bruce Dickenson collaborator/producer). Go figure right?
I can barely put to words just how hilariously bad these songs are. There are a few songs that I found to just be “meh” but good god when it’s bad it’s downright horrible. “Lochness confess your terror of the deep. Lochness distress malingers what you keep. Lochness protects monstrosity. Lochness confess to me.” Need I say more? I don’t even want to spend any more time talking about this “monstrosity.” Kill this thing with fire please.
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Nostradamus
Release Date: June 17, 2008
The Good: Prophecy, The Four Horseman, War, Sands of Time, Pestilence and Plague, Death, Peace, Conquest, Lost Love, Persecution, Shadows in the Flame, Visions, Calm Before the Storm, Nostradamus, Future of Mankind
The Bad: Exiled, Alone,
The Indifferent: Awakening, Revelations, Hope, New Beginnings,
Ok. So here’s the deal. I’m having a hard time really deciding if I really did like most of this album or was it just that Angel of Retribution was so fucking bad that anything will sound good after that? Well, in all honesty, I really was surprised to see just how much of Nostradamus I really liked. When I first saw that this album was two albums worth of material I immediately thought to myself, “This is going to be fucking hell.” Well, to my absolute surprise, Nostradamus was a pretty awesome listen.
Even the “bad” songs on this album weren’t anywhere near as bad as those on previous albums and what I really found myself enjoying a lot were the little interludes like “The Four Horsemen”, “Sands of Time”, and “Peace.” These little interludes had a lot of the weirdness of those first 2 or 3 Priest albums teetering on that kind of bizarre avant-garde thing. At times there were elements of Painkiller in there and some songs (especially the title track) had an almost Ram it Down kind of vibe. All in all, this album was surprisingly solid and I will totally revisit this one. I just love a pleasant surprise like this!
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Redeemer of Souls
Release Date: July 15, 2014
The Good:
The Bad:
The Indifferent: Dragonaut, Redeemer of Souls, Valhalla, Sword of Damocles, March of the Damned, Down in Flames, Hell & Back, Metalizer, Crossfire, Secrets of the Dead, Battle Cry, Beginning of the End
Ok, so here’s the deal with Redeemer of Souls. I gave this album a pretty shitty review and ya know what? I still stand by it but after hearing it sequentially like after all the shitty albums they made (not counting Nostradamus which was awesome) it doesn’t sound nearly as bad. With that being said, I still didn’t like this album. Why? Because the band sounds creatively and musically bankrupt. It’s pitiful to hear just how much vocal “assistance” needed in the studio because unless you are absolutely deaf or just plain stupid, you know damn good and well Halford cannot hit those notes live. That’s just a proven fact. That aside, the songs on Redeemer of Souls are just boring, drab, and lack any kind of life. Matter of fact, if this had been the “comeback” album when Halford returned to the fold this just may have been a spectacular album. Now? Not so much.
I mean, how many times can Priest dip into their own past to recycle elements of riffs of songs that have already been done? At least with Nostradamus Priest seemed to be trying something different by almost dipping their toes into the genre of symphonic metal. That album got slammed and I liked it while this album gets praise and I just find it to lack any kind of real oomph or life. It just sounds like a very safely played album for Judas Priest in order to try and recapture some sort of past glory. “Hey, look at us fellas. We’re still the same old Priest.” Well, in this case, Priest didn’t even really succeed at ripping themselves off and doing it well.
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