Poll: Which style of Judas Priest do you prefer?

[WildRanger]

70's material plus Painkiller is my favorite Priest.
Not a big fan of 80's Priest apart from SFV. Firepower is surprisingly very good and it really rocks, I'd take it over i.e. (classic) British Steel anytime.

 

[Kalata]

Painkiller and most of modern Priest just sounds like Spinal Tap to me. Everything cranked to 11 and that horrible clicky clacky drumming from Travis. He fucked the sound of the band up.
Not sure why they keep trying to rewrite Painkiller all the time, SFV sold four times as many copies as Painkiller did. It’s a bit like Maiden trying rewrite Fear of the Dark for the last 30 years, when the stuff that made them popular didn’t even really sound like that. Too many repetitive choruses and playing straight chords, not enough riffs.

The ''Painkiller style'' works for them the best. Maiden can afford to take different approaches since the Reunion, that's the legacy they're building. And I don't think the longer songs are trying to rewrite Fear.

As for Scott Travis' drumming, that's just his style.

I think it's the complete opposite, actually. Maiden changing their production, acquiring Bruce and so on did give them some of the "cleaner" sheen and moved their sound from "hard rock"-adjacent do outright "metal", but if anything, they leaned into their idiosyncracies - the ever-present love 'Arry always had for prog and art rock and the general high-brow attitude became only more prominent with time (and more obvious with the clean production and Bruce's soaring vocals) and Maiden post-TNOTB were more unique than they were before; they actually managed to leave all of their NWOBHM brethren far behind.
On the contrary, Priest moved from quite a bit of an idiosyncratic, experimental and downright emotional band, dumbing it down, becoming more stereotypical and predictable in the process. The juiciness was lost, the metal streamlining did sometimes work (Defenders, about a half of Screaming), but the true creativity kinda took a nosedive.
Even with Prodigal Son/Remember Tomorrow/Strange World, which are some of the biggest outliers in Maiden's early career, I can see the latter versions of the band doing something like that - after all, they always had the tendency to throw the occasional spitball; Still Life, The Prophecy, Isle of Avalon, Journeyman... But I can't imagine post 1979 Priest covering Joan Baez or Spooky Tooth. Heck, I don't even remember something similar to that funny Exciter's "Pet Shop Boys section" on the latter albums (though correct me if I'm wrong in that regard).
To me, with the unification and the homogenisation of the sound, Maiden only became more Maiden, whereas Priest became more "metal". If that is a prime example of a double standard, in that classic "quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi" way, so be it.

Well said.

 

[malfeitor]

The middle section of Freewheel Burning sounds like a newer version of that Exciter moment you mentioned.

Priest were still experimenting in the 80s, but the approach was totally different. There's stuff like Out in the Cold, which is something like a half-ballad, it's most of their more unique songs they've ever written. There's Blood Red Skies, which is also a one-off in their whole discography. Then you have all the tracks that weren't released on the studio albums, but came out as bonus tracks years later. Turn on Your Light is perhaps the closest they got to songs such as Before the Dawn. Not to mention that decades later they released the controversial Nostradamus album, and that The Lodger from Invincible Shield is perhaps the strangest track I've ever heard from them.

Generally speaking - not only in the context of Judas Priest - the 70s were a much more experimental decade than the 80s. If you take a look at Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult or even AC/DC, you'll notice that most of the 70s rock acts changed their songwriting process in the 80s. Sabbath is probably the best example of that. They were incredibly creative when Ozzy was still in the band. Ward's drumming was a bit jazzy sometimes (Fairies Wear Boots), tracks like Symptom of the Universe sounded like nothing they had done earlier, Changes and Solitude were the "what?" moments of Vol. 4 and Master of Reality. And then there was Headless Cross (an album I personally love). Hell, even Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules are much safer records than Sabotage or Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

I think that the general reason why artists were so liberal back then was the fact that there were no rules. No limits. With the rise of NWOBHM, expectations were born. You had something that, after years of evolving, was metal and you could notice the difference between the liberal artistic attitude of the 70s artists and the much more conservative, coherent approach of the younger generation. Musicians wanted to make sure that their audiences know they're metal - there was no room for creative, albeit "weird" tunes like Priest's Burnin' Up (this one is basically a heavy disco song - a great one!). So instead of recording stuff like that, they sticked to some more straightforward songs. Did it work for them? Judging by the status of Defenders of the Faith and Screaming for Vengeance, I guess so.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

The middle section of Freewheel Burning sounds like a newer version of that Exciter moment you mentioned.

I was wondering if someone will bring that section up, but I didn't mean just a fast, catchy guitar harmony part; the Exciter section uses major scale and the guitars are produced so that it really sounds like a literal synth-pop part. Freewheel Burning is more along the lines of your usual metal harmony part (like the part in Powerslave that really reminds me of Asia... but not Pet Shop Boys! There's a difference )

But I agree these are somewhat close, kinda related.

Priest were still experimenting in the 80s, but the approach was totally different. There's stuff like Out in the Cold, which is something like a half-ballad, it's most of their more unique songs they've ever written. There's Blood Red Skies, which is also a one-off in their whole discography. Then you have all the tracks that weren't released on the studio albums, but came out as bonus tracks years later. Turn on Your Light is perhaps the closest they got to songs such as Before the Dawn. Not to mention that decades later they released the controversial Nostradamus album, and that The Lodger from Invincible Shield is perhaps the strangest track I've ever heard from them.

Nostradamus, for all its flaws, was an example of that, indeed. It was an album more experimental than anything Maiden ever released, probably. However, it came a tad too late and they turned away from it completely, to coddle themselves under the safe blanket of redoing Painkiller instead.
As for the general post-80s attitude, I'm not saying they weren't experimenting at all, but they never felt as fresh to me, so "clean and juicy", they never excited me with something out of the left field (like the aforementioned Last Rose of Summer, now that's a song I can't believe any metal band wrote and recorded, lol)

Generally speaking - not only in the context of Judas Priest - the 70s were a much more experimental decade than the 80s. If you take a look at Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult or even AC/DC, you'll notice that most of the 70s rock acts changed their songwriting process in the 80s. Sabbath is probably the best example of that. They were incredibly creative when Ozzy was still in the band. Ward's drumming was a bit jazzy sometimes (Fairies Wear Boots), tracks like Symptom of the Universe sounded like nothing they had done earlier, Changes and Solitude were the "what?" moments of Vol. 4 and Master of Reality. And then there was Headless Cross (an album I personally love). Hell, even Heaven and Hell and Mob Rules are much safer records than Sabotage or Sabbath Bloody Sabbath.

Yes, Sabbath are another band that I vastly prefer in the 70s and not just because I'm a doomy frood. It's exactly for what you mention - multipart songs, pianos, jazzy drumming, obvious Beatles love, more personal lyrics etc. (and more creative and original riffs). I like Dio, I like Heaven and Hell and (most of) Mob Rules and I love every single Sabbath album with Butler at least a bit, but that early run is absolutely untouchable IMHO. Doesn't help that Dio turned the band into "Rainbath" of sorts (I think 70s Sabbath and the early Rainbow are vastly superior to 80s-and-onwards Sabbath, despite the latter having 11/10 and 12/10 songs like Heaven and Hell and Sign of the Southern Cross; it just says nothing new, kinda, if you know what I mean).

I think that the general reason why artists were so liberal back then was the fact that there were no rules. No limits. With the rise of NWOBHM, expectations were born. You had something that, after years of evolving, was metal and you could notice the difference between the liberal artistic attitude of the 70s artists and the much more conservative, coherent approach of the younger generation. Musicians wanted to make sure that their audiences know they're metal - there was no room for creative, albeit "weird" tunes like Priest's Burnin' Up (this one is basically a heavy disco song - a great one!). So instead of recording stuff like that, they sticked to some more straightforward songs. Did it work for them? Judging by the status of Defenders of the Faith and Screaming for Vengeance, I guess so.

It did work for them commercially, no contest there. I still think the shift you mentioned was more beneficial to Maiden, as it (again, IMHO) actually deepened their identity, whereas with Priest it somewhat dilluted it.

That said, I've been playing Screaming and Defenders in the car yesterday and those albums are still great, don't take my grumbling that seriously.

 

[Lost in a lost world]

Other than Diamonds and Rust, I don’t find much of their work prior to Hellbent for Leather that appealing. Screaming for Vengeance and Turbo are the Priest albums I’ve listened to the most.

 

[malfeitor]

The funny thing is that both Ken and Rob are still very proud of Nostradamus. Halford even keeps saying that he wants to perform the whole record live at some point, it's one of his dreams that's yet to happen. I doubt they'll ever do that. I like the songs on it, but it is too long. A few years ago I made a shortened version of Nostradamus on Spotify. It's 1h06 long, so I axed like 40 minutes of the source material. I think that the general flow of the album is better this way. I don't agree on Priest re-doing Painkiller album after album. Yes, all of the records they released after Rob's comeback are partially rooted in Painkiller, although the word "partially" is important here. On Invincible Shield there obviously are Painkiller-related tracks (Panic Attack, As God is My Witness), but at the same time there's no way they could have included a track like Escape From Reality, Crown of Horns or Giants in the Sky on the 1990 album. Same thing can be said about Firepower. Rising From Ruins is something like a mix of Visions and Blood Red Skies, and No Surrender serves as a callback to the 80s. On Redeemer of Souls only 4 tracks remind me of Painkiller (Battle Cry, the title song, Halls of Valhalla, maybe Metalizer as well) - other than that, I don't hear much of the Painkiller vibes on it. On the contrary, Crossfire and Hell and Back remind me of the early Priest. Secrets of the Dead could have been a Nostradamus song, if they had written it a few years earlier.

The older I am, the more I appreciate Priest's early efforts. That's an interesting observation I made several years ago, but at the same time, I still notice the flaws of the earlier albums. I do think that Epitaph is the result of the band's (maybe just Halford's) fascination with Queen, and it sounds out of place on Sad Wings of Destiny. Last Rose of Summer isn't a bad track at all, but I definitely don't think about it too much. Again, Sin After Sin was a very intense record, filled with great songs, and LRoS just sounds like it was recorded by a completely different band (on the other hand, IMO Here Come the Tears is one of the best moments of the album). Stained Class does feel complete. It's like they took all everything that had worked before, and did the same thing they had done with SWoD and SAS, but this time they didn't want to focus on unconventional ideas like the ballads I mentioned above. Killing Machine is something a little different than its predecessors, but it's such a fun LP. The best thing about their SWoD-KM run is that they're all good. I can enjoy each and every of these albums (I do like Rocka Rolla too, but you can hear they were an inexperienced band when they were making the album). Overall, I like both Screaming for Vengeance and Defenders of the Faith better than the 70s albums, but the problem is that the 80s brought us albums such as Point of Entry and Turbo. I find Turbo enjoyable, to some extent, but some tracks on PoE are just terrible and I don't revisit the whole thing often. They definitely lacked consistency back then. It wasn't a problem pre-British Steel, but it became a problem as soon as the band got interested in alcohol and drugs.

 

[Sth2112]

Since British steel is my favorite, and Screaming and Defenders are also high up, I definetly prefer leather and studs Priest

 

[Azas]

I also like Nostradamus—in that silent, head-nodding kind of way. Sure, it’s very different for Priest, but it’s interesting. Some of those short songs and interludes are actually great and hit me emotionally. I enjoy that kind of stuff.

 

[dickinson1978]

Painkiller

 

[Azas]

Painkiller

The one that’s half man, half machine? Now that’s great!