Let's get back to this one for now. I'm not going through the albums chronologically here, but more or less by how much I like them.
Painkiller is my favourite Priest album, and one of my favourite heavy metal albums ever. I never get tired of headbanging to the title track. Night Crawler and Between the Hammer and the Anvil are amazingly engaging tracks, One Shot at Glory is simply... BAM!, A Touch of Evil has to be one of the greatest love-ish songs ever, All Guns are Blazing should lose the vocal intro but is great after that, and although the other tracks drop a bit, they're still great. This album is heavy metal at it's finest.
Screaming for Vengeance is one of the most enduring albums ever, with unbreakable milestones such as The Hellion/Electric Eye, You've got Another Thing Coming, Pain and Pleasure, Riding on the Wind and I'll stop here because otherwise I'd list the entire album. This is the stuff heroes are made of.
I'm going to disagree a bit with Forostar on Defenders of the Faith, because not only does it have (one of) the best A-Side(s) in heavy metal history, but it doesn't just stop being great there. It bulldozes its way straight to Some Heads are Gonna Roll without losing an ounce of quality before running out of steam with the final two and a half songs.
Stained Class is another huge classic and favourites of mine, mostly for the title track, Beyond the Realms of Death (again, one of the best heavy metal songs ever), Better By You, Better Than Me, Invader, Saints in Hell and Exciter. Savage and Hero's End are also amazing.
Angel of Retribution is another great one, and another one I can't seem to find anything deeply wrong with. Again, it has some of my favourites on it, and again it's just one huge strong masterpiece. Worth Fighting For is one of my favourite songs ever.
British Steel may be overplayed, but is not overrated in my opinion. There is a reason nearly every single one of these tracks is classic: It's because they're so goddamn great! Even if you picked one out at random, you couldn't fail.
And then it drops. And drops. And the other albums just aren't as good. Every one of them has several great tracks on it, but a handful of good tracks don't make a good album, my friends. I could pick the good ones out of every one of these albums and compile them on a three- or perhaps four-CD compilation, and then I'd be happy. But if I ever have to sit through another listening of Johnny B. Goode, I'll torture somebody. The "best of the rest" probably are Killing Machine and Sad Wings of Destiny, because they've got more good tracks on them than bad ones. Well, okay, maybe Sin after Sin deserves that mention too. But Ram it Down? Point of Entry? Turbo? Even though they have got some, and I want that emphasised, absolutely f'cking brilliant tracks on them, I can't go as far as call them good or even great albums.
