Exhibit #2:
Judas Priest—Screaming for Vengeance (1982)
This album cover is another poster I remember seeing on my cousins' bedroom wall. Not only that, but it was also a metallic flecked pin I bought—or more likely begged my mother to buy—in a record store as a child and it was something I wore proudly on my jacket for several years after. Not because I knew anything about the band, but because I loved that damn robot eagle. When I did finally hear the band, as with Iron Maiden, I was disappointed. They just seemed so… ordinary. I have to admit I pretty much wrote them off from a young age, and unlike Maiden, I never had any friends who were into them so I never gave them much of a listen until this week.
Now I'm listening, and what this album overwhelmingly makes me think of is a time when I associated clean, scalpel-like heavy metal guitar with the music of the future. It seems weird now, but that's often how it was presented back in the movies of the 80s, and listening to this album it's not hard to see why. There's a certain Devo-ish or Gary Numan-esque aesthetic at work on several of the tracks—most prominently on "Electric Eye"—and there truly is something mechanical and precise about those crystaline guitar leads that accompany it. There are even some surprises here, like "(Take These) Chains", which starts off sounding almost like it could be a Police song before going all metal. It, and the subsequent track "Pain and Pleasure", are also noteworthy for their fantastic, very non-heavy metal, clinical production style—something I think really sets this album apart from its NWOBHM brethren.
Like
The Number of the Beast, the musicianship on display here is top-notch, but the approach is incredibly different. Where that album has more of a sprawling, proggy style, the songs on this album are compact and laser focused. The rhythm section of Dave Holland and Ian Hill don't do anything too amazing individually, but instead lock in with each other perfectly to create these galloping, frequently dancy, foundations for the songs. Likewise, Glenn Tipton and K. K. Downing meld their guitars together seamlessly for some seriously enrapturing and precise sonic geometry. Rob Halford attacks each track with such glee that he makes it seem effortless, though he appears to have an endless supply of vocal variations in his arsenal. Yes, his singing is pretty bombastic, but unlike Bruce Dickinson, it tends to actually work with the music—there's a real symbiosis between his voice and those robotic guitars.
If there's one gripe I have with this album, it's that it feels like it kind of peters out as it goes along. It's not that it ever gets bad, but the later tracks don't quite stack up to the first few, especially "Electric Eye" which is by far the best song on the album. Overall, I like this album a lot—though I'm not entirely sure how much staying power it will have for me—and I'm very curious to check out other stuff from them. I know Unknown Soldier has mentioned that
Stained Class is a much darker album. So I think that may be my next stop with JP, but before that, I have the rest of these reviews to write.