Judas Priest Week on Maidenfans (August 3-9, 2009)

Which band shall we listen to next week?

  • Opeth (nominated by Onhell)

    Votes: 3 23.1%
  • Slayer (nominated by Perun)

    Votes: 4 30.8%
  • Iced Earth (nominated by cornfedhick)

    Votes: 6 46.2%

  • Total voters
    13
First Priest I ever heard was Turbo, and at 13ish, I thought it was straight up awesome!!  Loved that album, pretty much from start to finish.  The title track has lost some luster to me, but I still enjoy the album, all-in-all.

They were one of those bands that I had to go forwards to go backwards with.  Ram It Down had come out soon after I started into them, and I remember thinking how much better Rob's voice sounded to me on that, rather than Turbo.  Seemed harder and more metal to me.  It was at that point that I started going back to their older stuff (no one that I knew had any Priest stuff).  I found that Ram It Down was more the 'norm' for them. 
 
I listened to a whole bunch of Priest albums yesterday - everything from Rocka Rolla thru SFV. My verdict is that Priest went a long time doing what bands ought to do, which is get better with every album. I think Sin After Sin is the best of their early sound, while British Steel just barely beats out Hell Bent For Leather as their next peak. SFV was the 3rd landmark, and Painkiller the 4th.

What really counts is that they're still trying to improve, or at least not to rest on their laurels. An album like Nostradamus is risky for any band. They could have gone the way of AC/DC and put out the same album year after year, but they don't. (At least now they don't. I'll just ignore Point Of Entry for the moment.)
 
Kopfanatic said:
has anyone heard the new live album yet?
Here's the thing: Half of the album is fantastic. Between the Hammer and Anvil is excellent, even better than on the painkiller tour.
However, all the songs from the 2005 tour are just remixed versions of Rising in the East which is just insane. Why would you do that? I'm not even sure some of the bandmembers themselves are aware that it's from Rising in the East because they've said that it's only previously unreleased tracks several times. Maybe it's the management that picked out those recordings?

So, the newly recorded ones are great, the rest are reissues. By the way, a new DVD has been announced, to be filmed in Florida (one of the smaller gigs. I don't know why they didn't film Toronto or a gig of equivalent size, 10 000 attendants). They are touring now, playing the entire British Steel live plus some other songs. They play a short but brilliant set (around 1 hour 16 minutes) and Rob is sounding better than he has in the past five years.

Also, I approve of this thread. Priest is my favorite band along with Maiden and I love most albums with a couple of exceptions. All albums have some great songs though.
 
Yax said:
Also, I approve of this thread. Priest is my favorite band along with Maiden and I love most albums with a couple of exceptions. All albums have some great songs though.

*Paid for by committee to re-elect Yax as High (Judas) Priest of Murray
 
LooseCannon said:
Hey, I said I liked it.
You did indeed. ;)

On the subject of Priest, has anyone seen that film "Rock Star" starring Mark Wahlberg? Apparently based on (if not, most definitely inspired by) the Halford/Owens saga. I did start watching it a few days ago and although I loved the metal clichés, I didn't keep me interested to sit through it - but I may turn to watch it again someday.
 
Albie said:
You did indeed. ;)

On the subject of Priest, has anyone seen that film "Rock Star" starring Mark Wahlberg? Apparently based on (if not, most definitely inspired by) the Halford/Owens saga. I did start watching it a few days ago and although I loved the metal clichés, I didn't keep me interested to sit through it - but I may turn to watch it again someday.
I did. Horrible. At first, Priest were going to record the soundtrack and help to market the film but since they... Deviated from the original fact based script into fiction they withdrawed. The singer who dubbed Wahlberg is great though.
 
I liked it. I took it for what it is - a fictional film inspired by real events. In any case, it was a nice homage to 80's hard rock/metal.
 
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.
 
I agree with Per, all the way until "And then it drops". I hold Nostradamus in regard as the best metal album ever and I think Jugulator is excellent, Demolition is okay, Ram it Down is full of fillers but with some real gems, Turbo is growing on me, Sad Wings of Destiny is a masterpiece, and Killing Machine and Sin after Sin are great. Rocka Rolla however doesn't represent Priest the slightest.
 
Yax said:
I hold Nostradamus in regard as the best metal album ever

That's interesting. I personally think that it's a completely unnecessary, overlong extension of the most unnecessarily overlong track ever, which is Loch Ness. Not that I'm denying you your opinion, but I'm still quite amazed at how extremely tastes can differ.

Ah yeah, you mentioned Jugulator and Demolition. I actually forgot about those, which says everything about them: I think they're forgettable.
 
Perun said:
That's interesting. I personally think that it's a completely unnecessary, overlong extension of the most unnecessarily overlong track ever, which is Loch Ness. Not that I'm denying you your opinion, but I'm still quite amazed at how extremely tastes can differ.

Ah yeah, you mentioned Jugulator and Demolition. I actually forgot about those, which says everything about them: I think they're forgettable.
I'll give it to you though, I disregard the cheesy lyrics.
 
I'd still be interested in hearing why you think this is the best metal album ever. I mean, that's not a title you toss around lightly. ;)
 
Perun said:
I'd still be interested in hearing why you think this is the best metal album ever. I mean, that's not a title you toss around lightly. ;)
Let's put it this way: It's one of, if not the album with the longest runtime I own and it's the album I've played through in its entirety the most times by far.
I think it's very atmospheric. I can just sit there and get lost inside the music and its atmosphere. It has everything I love about Priest and Rob really impresses in the mid range (A couple more screams wouldn't have been a bad thing though). I love the beutiful vocal melodies, the crunching riffs and its kickass tunes which links nicely into the next by short interludes or whatever you call it.

Edit: I'm gonna add the following: You can't really break it down and listen to individual songs because then it looses a lot of the album's magic. War is horrible when played alone but when you play the album it fits into the context. This is an album and not just a collection of songs.
 
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