Four years on from the debut of Tim Owens and the rebirth of Judas Priest, and they were back with what would turn out not only to be their last album with him, but also their last for another four years.
Demolition (2001)
More mechanical mayhem kicks us off, as “Machine man” gives us the sound of machinery, hissing like maybe steam in pipes, then the drumming of Scott Travis batters us down before Tipton and Downing slice in with their guitar work, the song a fast, rip-roaring metal headbanger that is more in the mould of Halford-era Priest than the previous album. “One on one” however goes back to copying Metallica and Slayer and kind of failing on both counts; it's heavy, it rocks but it sounds too much like a clone song. Also it seems to have (oh no) some sort of rap in it? Or am I just drunk? Nice reflective guitar opening “Hell is home” (crickets too?) but I'm not fooled that this is a ballad. I'm just waiting for it to break out of the cowboy rock and into ... well, it stays slow but heavy and I don't think anyone would call that a ballad. Pretty crushing really.
“Jeckyll and Hyde” shows Priest finally returning somewhat to the fantasy-themed lyrical content of their early albums, however it's still pretty much Metallica-lite, and it still doesn't work, not for me. There's a really nice keyboard (courtesy of Airey again) and guitar intro to “Close to you”, which I think may actually be a ballad. Well, sort of. Not like some of their other ballads. Not at all really. Sounds like talkbox guitar kicking off “Devil digger”, another powerful grinder with a hoarse vocal from Owens. Is it unintentionally prophetic that he growls
”I don't want to fade away”?
More keyboards and an atmospheric opening to “Bloodsuckers” with an industrial feel to it, especially in the percussion, flies along nicely but it's a little disjointed. For some reason Owens completely takes off Ronnie James Dio for “Feed on me”, so much so that for a moment I thought I had put on a Dio album by mistake! It's a great song, but again it's not a Priest one. Chris Tsangrides again lends his composing skills to “Subterfuge”, only the second Priest song he has helped co-write, and it's replete with industrial keyboard riffs though the guitars are hard and menacing enough; in fact, it kind of raises the quality compared to what's been before it. One of the better tracks certainly.
Nice laidback guitar to start “Lost and found”, could be a proper ballad here. Some great backing vocals too. Yeah, it's a decent ballad, and a second candidate for standout, though to be fair that's not a very long list with this album. Another spacey introduction to “Cyberface”, the only song on which Scott Travis tries his hand at writing. It has a dark, marching overtone to it and again it's all over the place, not sure what it wants to be. We close then on one more effort from Tsangrides, as “Metal messiah”, a great name for a metal track if ever there was one, hits, but unfortunately it's almost a hip-hop/nu-metal style and it really ends the album on a damp squib and a sour note. The stupid, semi-arabic or islamic chant in the middle is just laughable and reduces what could have been a decent closer into a real embarrassment, and surely set the seal on the end of the relationship between Tim Owens and Judas Priest.
TRACKLISTING
1. Machine man
2. One on one
3. Hell is home
4. Jekyll and Hyde
5. Close to you
6. Devil digger
7. Blood suckers
8. In between
9. Feed on me
10. Subterfuge
11. Lost and found
12. Cyberface
13. Metal messiah
If it wasn't already clear from the previous album that the writing was on the wall, you'd have to be blind not to see that it really was not working on this, their second album with Owens. I don't know what it is: the magic just isn't there. Sometimes when the lynchpin of the band leaves it just doesn't sound the same and the elements that made the band what they were are missing, or diminished. Again it's the Bruce Dickinson syndrome: who can honestly say they enjoyed
The X Factor or
Virtual XI? Be honest now.
Owens tried, but perhaps too hard. Or maybe it's not fair to lay all the blame on his shoulders; after all, Tipton and Downing were pretty much responsible for all the songwriting here, so the new direction they were trying to pull Priest in was more or less down to them. And it was not working. Something had to be done, and fast, as the sharks began to circle Judas Priest's heavy metal throne and water began to lap at its feet, before one of the oldest metal bands became nothing more than a fading memory.