Unknown Soldier

Overview
After the disappointing Point of Entry the year before, an album which just didn’t have the songs. Judas Priest knew they had to pull something special out of the hat for their eighth studio album Screaming for Vengeance, especially if they were to maintain their position as one of world’s premier metal acts. Screaming for Vengeance would not only rectify this situation in the manner most appropriate, it would also give us an album that was even stronger than their landmark British Steel release two years earlier. Judas Priest were of course one of the biggest metal bands in the world in 1982, but their US sales were certainly lagging behind those of the rest of the world and it was time the band rectified this slight. Ultimately Screaming for Vengeance would sell 5 million units around the world and go double platinum in the US, finally earning the band the same commercial prestige that it was earning elsewhere. In fact that year on their US Tour they were supported by the likes of both Iron Maiden and old boys in Uriah Heep who had returned to form with their Abominog album. The album’s big single would be “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin” which as is often the case, was a last minute addition to the album as the band thought they needed another song. This certainly recalls bands like Black Sabbath and Kansas to name just two, who used last minute song additions to have two of their biggest ever hit songs. In my opinion the other single from the album “(Take These) Chains” written by Bob Halligan, Jr. is actually the better song of the two. Screaming for Vengeance along with the following Defenders of the Faith, are often seen as two of metal’s greatest shining moments and act as a display of what timeless metal should be all about. This grandiose title was probably only matched by newer rivals Iron Maiden with their classic double helping of Piece of Mind and Powerslave when it comes to mainstream metal from the 1980s onwards and these two albums easily go toe to toe with the Judas Priest ones. Like with the listing’s previous album review by Iron Maiden, a whopping number of tracks on Screaming for Vengeance have been covered by too many bands to mention here and the album stars highly on every ‘best metal album list’ that really matters out there.

Verdict
By 1982 Judas Priest’s best album to date had been the monolithic Stained Class (see review) but that album was strictly for metalheads that knew their stuff and not for your average metal listener. Realizing that Stained Class was an act just to great to recreate again so quickly, Judas Priest quickly caught onto the commercial metal tag and they were probably one of the first metal bands to do so, and entertained the listening masses firstly with the lighter and melodic Killing Machine/Hell Bent for Leather, which was then followed up by its bigger brother with British Steel (see both album reviews) with its trademark pop hooks and it was an album that went down a blast, and launched the already veteran band to the highest level of commercial metaldom. On Screaming for Vengeance the band would effectively marry the pure menacing metal of Stained Class, to the commercial punch of British Steel to give us one of metal’s premier albums and it would certainly be an album that would pack one hell of a punch! The album goes for the jugular from the word go and like a lot of landmark albums it does this by employing an opening barrage of stunning tracks to knock the listener silly. There is the double-guitar attack on the brief intro of “The Hellion” which then lands us straight into the lap of “Electric Eye” the real album opener with its combination of both speed and punch, the song feels like a knock-out punch in the first round of a boxing match! On closer analysis as well, the song demonstrates Rob Halford’s amazing ability to sing in a multi-dimensional style at real speed, certainly no easy thing to do. He then keeps things more one dimensional on the hard rock feel of “Riding on the Wind” before he drops things down a notch or two on the midtempo grooves of the epic “Bloodstone”. Then just when you think things can’t get any better, the band dish out one of their best ever melodic tracks in the single “(Take These) Chains” before the first side of the album closes with the inevitable S&M track “Pleasure and Pain”. As expected the title track “Screaming for Vengeance” plays like a menacing speed metal track and then the album’s big single “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin” is neatly dropped in. The final tracks contain "Fever" one of the most ambient on the album and then finally the almost AC/DC sounding "Devil's Child" and some editions also include "Prisoner of Your Eyes" which is worth having. Certain sceptics against the album have picked out the thinness of certain tracks, for example like “Electric Eye” which they claimed was a rehash of “Breaking the Law” or indeed claimed some of the material was no better than what featured on Point of Entry. Overall Iron Maiden’s The Number of the Beast might have the stronger individual tracks from a songwriting perspective, but it simply doesn’t doesn’t touch Screaming for Vengeance when it comes to song flow, something I usually give great importance to. Finally Kerrang! called Screaming for Vengeance some years after its release, one of the finest metal albums released this century, high praise indeed and from an objective point of view I wouldn’t disagree with that, even if I still prefer the darker Stained Class over it.

Rob Halford- Vocals
K.K Downing- Guitar
Glenn Tipton- Guitar
Ian Hill- Bass
Dave Holland- Drums

Production- Tom Allom

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