Deep Album Cuts Vol. 350: Judas Priest
Judas Priest's 19th studio album Invincible Shield is out this week. So I wanted to do a playlist of the band's classic run, the first couple decades of Rob Halford's original run with Priest.
2. Beyond The Realms Of Death
3. The Sentinel
4. Hell Bent For Leather
5. Grinder
6. Victim Of Changes
7. Desert Plains
8. Ram It Down
9. Dissident Aggressor
10. Hot For Love
11. Riding On The Wind
12. Metal Gods
13. Genocide (live)
14. Run Of The Mill
15. Night Crawler
16. Rock Forever
Track 14 from Rocka Rolla (1974)
Track 14 from Rocka Rolla (1974)
Track 6 from Sad Wings of Destiny (1976)
Track 9 from Sin After Sin (1977)
Track 9 from Sin After Sin (1977)
Track 2 from Stained Class (1978)
Tracks 4 and 16 from Killing Machine aka Hell Bent For Leather (1978)
Track 13 from Unleashed In The East (1979)
Tracks 5 and 12 from British Steel (1980)
Track 7 from Point Of Entry (1981)
Tracks 1 and 11 from Screaming For Vengeance (1982)
Track 3 from Defenders Of The Faith (1984)
Track 10 from Turbo (1986)
Track 8 from Ram It Down (1988)
Track 15 from Painkiller (1990)
In terms of putting together these playlists, Judas Priest is like an ideal artist to me, in the sense that they have big hits that have been on the radio a million times, but they also have a whole other set of songs that are canonical metal songs, live staples and fan favorites. So I mainly drew on the decades of conventional wisdom about Judas Priest's best songs for this, occasionally diverting or picking favorites or finding contrasts or thinks that fit together well in the sequence. The overwhelming majority of these playlists, especially these days, are in chronological order, but the early Priest stuff feels kind of low energy compared to how heavy they got by the end of the '70s, so it made more sense to mix things up and have some of those ass-kicking midperiod songs earlier on.
I'm generally bigger on hard rock than metal, and my favorite hard rock frontmen are Freddie Mercury and Chris Cornell. So it makes sense that the metal singers I prefer are the dramatic wailers like Rob Halford, Bruce Dickinson, and Ronnie James Dio. Halford is a joy to listen to on all these songs, even the ones that would otherwise feel a little rote, his vibrato is insane. I remember watching the band's "Behind the Music" episode and hearing that little live clip of "Hell Bent For Leather" and being like, woah, these guys kick ass. Two years ago Judas Priest was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- they didn't get voted in with that year's main inductees, but a committee selected them for the Musical Excellence award and they got to be part of the ceremony and everything. I don't like that, because the Musical Excellence category used to be called 'Sidemen' and most of the people in it are musicians like Randy Rhoads or Scotty Moore who played alongside solo artists, not entire bands. Judas Priest should be in the Hall proper alongside Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, in my opinion.
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