Townsman, please explain to me why, based on the random samplings I’ve heard of Judas Priest’s music since their late-70s prime, they have always struck me as the best of the second-generation, barely blues-based Heavy Metal bands. Last night I was watching a VH-1 documentary on the making of their breakthrough album, British Steel, I think it’s called. I remembered a lot of those songs, and the album tracks had their merits too, even while I sniggered through the more Spinal Tap elements. This morning, while eating breakfast and catching some pre-work tube, VH-1 broadcast some cheesy response to Billy Idol called “Turbo Lover”. Even that song was better than the second-generation heavy metal (and Hair Metal) competition. You know more about this band than I do. Please explain what I’m feeling. Thanks.
They’re the most structured, pop, nuanced, and even original band of that particular context. If you’ll accept the overly broad frame of reference, they’re clearly more Beatles than Stones–which is relatively rare in metal, as you know.
Every time they dumbed it down, they sold even more records, of course.
Yes, this sounds about right. Thanks.
This being said, and this verifying my belief that they’re the best second-generation heavy metal band, what does this really say about the genre and, more broadly, about music?
I’d never seen that “Turbo Lover” video, by the way. It’s funny, actually, and pretty consciously so, I think. Their late 80s albums really scrape the bottom of the barrel though, with only one or two bearable songs.
I don’t have much clue about what it says about anything larger; they were a great antidote to the church music I grew up with, and my parents were mystified by my interest in a way that was quite satisfying at 15. The early records had a lot of appeal for someone who’d grown up reading Poe and Lovecraft, I suppose.
Good stuff, Mwall. I was kidding a bit about the greater meaning, but I’m glad I got a broader perspective out of you. In listening to that British Steel stuff, I realized that Judas Priest speaks to more broad musical values than I would have suspected.
They’ve got plenty of pop hooks, I think. Of the big-time drama metal sort often, but still.