Classic Rock Bottom

VOTW - JUDAS PRIEST Special

I was about to make a Rob Halford-special, but it ended up being a Judas Priest-special instead. I thought, it might be funny with a Halford special, since he also had his "Fight" and "Halford"-bands, but looking through the options, I could see/hear, that my heart was in the old Judas Priest-video's. I consider "British Steel" as the first really Heavy Metal-album, that I ever bought, in May 1980. But not only that, because it might just be the best Heavy Metal-album ever made. And imo Judas Priest is maybe the best Heavy Metal-band that ever exsisted, that really knew, what Heavy Metal was about. They made a string of great Metal-albums from 1977 untill 1982 (Sin After Sin, Stained Class, Killing Machine, British Steel, Point Of Entry and Screaming For Vengeance). Then they made two very good, but not great albums (Defenders Of The Faith and Turbo) and then they ruined it all, by making Ram It Down, and lost me forever. But from 1977-1982, they were the heavy weight champions of the world, and not even the mighty Iron Maiden could beat them as the best Heavy Metal-band.

JUDAS PRIEST - EVENING STAR

I'll post these video's in order, so let's start with a song from "Killing Machine", as the original album was called in Europe. It's a very good album, and it was the third album, I got by Priest, since I got it in April 1981 (yes, I remember those things). In 1981 the album sounded a bit dated already, but these days, it doesn't sound dated at all.

JUDAS PRIEST - BREAKING THE LAW

This song and Running Free by Iron Maiden was played on Radio Luxembourg in early May 1980, and I accidently heard that show. The next day, I went out and asked in the local vinyl-shop for albums by Judas Priest and "Unmaiden" (since I couldn't hear, what they were called on the radio). I got "British Steel" and had to wait 3 months before I realized, that "the other band" wasn't called "Unmaiden", when I found out, IRON MAIDEN was going to be support for KISS, on the show I was about to see in October 1980. But that summer 1980, I was playing British Steel a lot, and could hear, that this was the kind of music, I had been looking for for quite a while. Sadly, there ain't many videos of the very best songs from the album, because imo, the least good songs are Breaking The Law, United and Living After Midnight, the rest are top-stellar Heavy Metal-songs of the finest caliber.

JUDAS PRIEST - DON'T GO

Point Of Entry was a step in the right direction for Priest, and I've always loved that album. Again, the best songs like Heading Out The Highway, Desert Plains and Solar Angles are really not to be found as video's in Youtube, and Don't Go was never one of my favorites from that album. As the former mentioned 3 songs from British Steel, it sounds like an attempt to make a hit, and that's not good in my book. I don't know, why the least good songs have to be singles.

JUDAS PRIEST - BLOODSTONE

I couldn't believe it, when I heard Screaming For Vengeance in August 1982, that they had outdone themselves once more. It became my favorite album of the year 1982, but once more, the singles like You've Got Another Thing Coming were the least good songs on the album. This time, though, I've found a live-clip with one of the best songs from that album.

JUDAS PRIEST - FREEWHEEL BURNING

Again, definitely not one of my favorite-songs from Defenders Of The Faith, but it's not one of the worse either. Probably the first time ever, I heard "Thrash-Metal". When I heard side 1 of the album in January 1984, I thought they had made a better album than Screaming For Vengeance, but side 2 was not at all very good.I nearly got to see Priest on this tour, With Mötly Crüe as support, but my dad wouldn't lent me and my buddy his car, so we couldnt go in the end, and stayed home, and got drunk instead, listening to Judas Priest on the stereo.

JUDAS PRIEST - OUT IN THE COLD

At the time in 1986, it sounded like they had done it again, and back in 1986, I had a hard time, making my mind up, which album was the better, meaning album of the year, this one or Rage For Order by Queensrÿche. Nowadays, "Turbo" sounds VERY dated, and it's really not that good an album after all. But at last I got to see Judas Priest live, and I was wondering, if they were going to play Out In THe Cold, since it was my favorite from the album, and low and behold, they started the concert with the song, just like this clip from a "Concert-video" I bought the year after, in 1987. I loved those concert-video's back then.

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EVENING STAR ...  Hell Bent For Leather as we got it over here was the first Priest album I was introduced to.  And at the time it was heavy heavy heavy, at least for me.  Burning Up is my favorite from the album, but really the whole album doesnt have any filler or duds on it, its awesome.

BREAKING THE LAW ...  British Steel was a revelation to me, it was heavy and melodic and the guitar work was/is amazing.  The twin attack works great for solos, but also as the rhythm parts of the tunes really stand out.  This band riffs with the best!  And I love the Beavis and Butthead "Breaking The Law" cartoon sequence as well.

DONT GO ... Agree with you, Point Of Entry was a great step forward.  I still don't get why people didn't get it.  It contains my favorite Priest tune - Desert Plains.  

BLOODSTONE ...  Yup, Screaming was yet another genius album.  The opener of The Hellion-Electric Eye are assaults to your ears in the very best way possible!  THis capped a serious run of 4 album excellence.  How many bands can do that?  And if you go back and listen to Stained Glass and Sin After Sin you could make a case for 6 in a row...

FREEWHEEL BURNING ...  My best friend pretty much left this in cassette deck in his car for all of 1984 and 85.  I'm convinced its all we listened to for months on end.  hahaha...  But I love it to, and you're right again that the album did put an end to their album excellence, but not in a bad way.  The songs are pretty solid, and though the style changed, it was the production of the album that threw me off.  I never could get into the drum sound here, too deep and there's no punch in them like the previous albums (check out Love Bites to hear what I mean) - but on the other hand I love the feel of them on Night Comes Down, just thought that took away from the album as a whole, just a bit.

OUT IN THE COLD ... Again, you're right...  Upon first release this album was stellar, cool and everyone was talking about it.  Time maybe has changed our minds but I wonder if we removed Parental Guidance from the mix if the album would have stood the time test a little better?  I think so....

Fine list this week sir!!

Will be checking this out shortly.  I'm off today, so I can actually pay attention...maybe.

Let me start by reminding everybody of my Judas Priest story.  I never liked this band, other than the songs Living After Midnight and You've Got Another Thing Coming.  It's not really because I listened to them and didn't like them, I just never had the desire to even give them a chance.  But now that I'm old, and sometimes wise, I like to buy up albums that were produced by rock bands that I have never been familiar with .  Judas Priest is no exception.  I wanted to buy the Judas Priest Complete Albums box, but it was around a hundred bucks, which is too much for a band that was never on my radar. But it stayed on the back burner for me, and one day I pulled it up on Amazon, and to my shock, the price was $12.99.  I double checked to make sure it wasn't just a greatest hits disc or something like that.  Nope, it was the entire box.  So I bought one (to my chagrin, I most definitely should have bought a few of them).  I figured that I didn't have anything to lose, if anything they just wouldn't send it.  But a couple days later it showed up.  I think I even pointed out on here how cheap it was, but less than an hour later the price was back to normal.  Anyway, the bottom line is that I got all of the Judas Priest albums up to Nostradamus for twelve dollars and change.

Evening Star - Funny thing is, this doesn't sound at all heavy metal to me.  It sounds like a song that could have been done by Styx.  One reason I never listened to JP is that I didn't think I would like Halford's voice.  I always thought he was a screamer and that was it.  But I've changed my opinion on that, he can definitely sing without always screeching. The ending of this song is what I imagined the vast majority of his vocals sounded like.  Anyway, the leather look is kind of funny, I never cared all that much for it.  The band is quite subdued in this video, and I hate those skinny microphones.  But I dig the song.

Breaking The Law - Maybe the absolute best thing to come out of the 80's was the cheesy videos.  It's such a period statement, and although they are totally cheesy and I'm sure many of the participants look back with great embarrassment, it's something we will always have.  Maybe that's an idea for a new CRB Group or Facebook Group, Cheesy Rock Videos.  Anyway, the most cheesy always seem to be the "concept" videos.  This is one of those, but it's definitely not the cheesiest ever.  The song was in a show, right?  Maybe Southpark or something like that?  I don't know for sure, I never watched that show.  It's not that bad Niels.

Don't Go - The very beginning notes of this song make me think of Thin Lizzy's Jailbreak.  While I do agree with you that the track sounds like an obvious attempt at a hit, I don't agree that the song is not very good.  I quite like it.

Bloodstone - I totally disagree about You've Got Another Thing Coming.  It's my favorite JP song.  This one doesn't really do much for me, it's kind of generic if you ask me.  Maybe because it's a live version.  I might like it better if I were to hear the studio version.  The video is just a straight up live performance, nothing special, but I do bet it was cool to see the band around this time.

Freewheel Burning - Not my style really.  It is somewhat thrashy, and the vocals are the type that I don't really care for. Always some good guitar soloing going on, but that's about the only positive I get here.  The video is okay, part performance, part concept.  Nothing remarkable, just okay.

Out In The Cold - I have a question.  Who is the keyboard player for JP?  And where is he?  You can tell by looking at this video, even if you didn't have the sound turned up, that this was during the height of the hairband craze that swept MTV in the mid to late 80's.  Then when you turn up the sound, the keyboards add to that 80's effect.  All that being said, this is a cool performance video and I like this song.  Might even like it better if I heard the studio version.

So nice work.  You and Scott have basically issued me a challenge to get out my JP and BOC complete albums boxes and put 'em in the truck.  It will probably take me several weeks to get through everything, as I don't have an exceptionally long drive to work.  I can usually average an album a day unless it's the weekend.  The wife don't play dat sh#@!

Actually, I don't think they were using Keyboards as such on Turbo. As Rob Halford said in an interview: "Some of the technological advances like the pedal boards that Glenn and KK used were giving us options for different sounds and experimentation." But it sure sound like a synthseizer on "Out In The Cold".

Evening Star isn't Heavy at all, but it IS one of my favorite tracks from "Killing Machine". That album isn't THAT heavy if you ask me, because as you might know, I claim that Heavy Metal was really born around the time of NWOBHM in 1979-1980.

That is my understanding as well regarding JP and keyboards on the Turbo album.

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