Screaming for Vengeance (originally recorded in '82) is another groundbreaking metal album! This showed the Priest at their prime with incredibly well-written metal songs that were intensely heavy yet still very catchy and marketable. This is also one of the best-produced metal albums in history! The guitars are so crunchy and the drums - particularly the snare drum - has such bite and attack! This is perhaps the perfect metal album! Songs like the blistering title track, "Electric Eye," "Riding On The Wind," "Bloodstone" and, perhaps the band's biggest hit to date, "You've Got Another Thing Coming" have become metal standards. The bonus tracks "Prisoner Of Your Eyes" and "Devil's Child" (live) are nothing special.
Defender Of The Faith is a solid metal album but came as a bit of a disappointment on the heals of Screaming For Vengeance. The two bonus tracks again are nothing special, but this is still a classic metal album that should be in the collection of every metal fan. The Turbo album is the band's poor excuse for attempting to become radio rock stars. Most the Priest fans forgave and forgot, and so will I. Ram It Down was the bands apology for Turbo. Here the band returns to their brutal brand of metal with songs like the title track, "Heavy Metal," and "Hard As Iron" proving to be the band's most hard-core tunes thus far. This album marked (in my mind) the third era of Priest, as they venture into the more hardcore metal realm which would go on to influence band like Pantera. The disc also contains two bonus live tracks.
Priest...Live! was the bands first double album/CD set. Although not near as good or classic as Unleashed album, but with a much slicker production, this album serves as the second-generation live Priest record, much like Kiss Alive II is considered. It also consists of three bonus live-tracks taken from the same "Fuel For Life" 1986 tour. Last but not least we have the Painkiller CD, the last Priest album recorded with Metal God Rob Halford. This album (originally released in 1990) truly shows the aggressive-metal side of Judas Priest and influenced a slew of hardcore metal fans that soon followed. The band self-produced this album along with Chris Tsangarides (who also engineered their Sad Wings Of Destiny album back in 1976) and it sounds incredible! The production has even more attack and crunch than their previous albums with Allom making this one of the greatest sounding metal albums! This also marks the bands first release with drummer Scott Travis, who definitely brings new life into the band. Just take a listen to the opening drum-attack in the title track, the classic Halford screams in "Hell Patrol," the back-breaking riff in "Nightcrawler" and the dark, vicious intro to "Touch Of Evil" (which leads into the ultimate power-metal groove!) and there is no denying that Judas Priest are one of the greatest heavy metal bands the world will ever witness! Bob Nalbandian
Shockwaves CD REVIEWS ISSUE 8 Page 9