By ANDREW McDONALD
REPUTATION practically tainted; I’ll declare there’s a certain band enjoying their time-honoured, legendary status that I’ve only come to love after a near lifetime of metal mania, an outfit which 20 years prior to my epiphany had already begun releasing classics.
The poseur, fake, false stigma riddles me with disgust and elder fans should rightly take umbrage with past indifferences, particularly since this monumental quintet have been circling my orbit since day one. They’re a band you either love, pay undying respect towards, appreciate their impact, or hand in your heavy metal license. So I seek absolution for committing the ultimate sin by regretfully confessing to only having become a true fan of Judas Priest within the past decade, despite many more decades of neglect.
If Zeppelin and Sabbath have been etched in stone as our founders, a Rob Halford-less incarnation of the band weren’t just riding their coattails in 1969 but were milling about the same streets at ground zero, and as often intoned when differentiating themselves from their Birmingham brethren, “Sabbath was heavy, but Priest was metal”. This should have been all the convincing needed and inevitably, all paths would lead to the Priest party, right?
Well, not necessarily.
In fact, some of the blame for my fickle, pre-teen stupidity should fall on Judas Priest themselves for releasing a piss-poor single just as they were ripe for my picking. I wonder how things could have been had the clock been wound back a few years to “Freewheel Burning” or forward just one to Painkiller, but unfortunately for me, I was Judas’d with a slapdash rendition of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode” and by the very band who I would later discover to be the kings of the obscure cover. It begs the question, can a bad apple spoil the luscious bunch thus depriving oneself years of juicy, sweet Priest nectar to lick off your pulpy wrists (feel free to use you own, more suitable analogy) or do you accept a fruitless existence with the same bruised bunch of bananas?
Here’s how things went wrong.
In an age prior to playlist or 24-hour-digital-metal-radio discoveries – and before living representations could be YouTube’d – I obsessed over the visual medium by voraciously recording music videos and handwriting track-lists on the back covers of formerly blank VHS cassettes until they were stacked higher than my head. Since metal videos rarely popped up on TV, I scoured the compilations of friends and friends of friends, double taping with two
videocassette recorders their libraries onto mine (basically stealing copyrighted media). Saturday night was pre-internet potluck. You would wade through hours of shit, VCR at the ready, in hopes that metal would present itself on Rage (the oldest music television program currently still in
production as of 2021) which typically began at 11pm and went through until sunrise. Rage featured guest programmers, or VJs – mostly non-metal artists to gamble on in hopes that their tastes were sympathetic. KISS, Black Sabbath and AC/DC were surprising staples, and for instance, rapper Ice-T filled segments with Sepultura and Slayer (now who would have thought?).
If an established band was on the verge of a major new release you might instead get a band’s entire videography in chronological order followed by new music videos that aligned with the genre, and once in a blue moon, if you were really lucky, those new music videos would be all metal! Queue long-player mode on a 240-hour VHS and let the content of the next morning’s auto-ejected cassette trump Christmas!
This is how Judas Priest first materialised, via their new video for “Johnny B. Goode”. Recorded and filmed for a movie of the same name starring Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Downey Jr., Priest needed to make amends after turning down the mega-selling Top Gun, but sadly, their Johnny was no gun. The song also featured on their latest, and dare I say, weakest album, Ram It Down. In a post-Guns N’Roses world where armour was being shed, the excessive tasselled-leather and studs suggested the wrong end of the decade but could be forgiven if only it had been the video-less, album highlight “Blood Red Skies”, or less than a year later where the again black/white, leather/stud video belonged to the ear-shattering “Painkiller” with a studio-production akin to that same year’s standard-setter Cowboys From Hell. Or, despite drastic keys, I could still have fallen in Turbo love with Ram’s predecessor. In fact, practically anything in the formidable Judas Priest arsenal could have changed the course of my sad-winged destiny… I could have been a defender of the faith, a screamer for vengeance, a hell-bending leather, motorcycle revving, metal god etc. etc.
You quickly picked up on which bands held sizeable back-catalogues and if I was in, I was all in, the completist in me needing to amass every last LP, single, VHS. From all I’d seen under ‘J’ in my records stores’ metal section, Priest were no spring chickens and with limited pocket-money, they were sadly set aside. There were no fans at school to borrow or double-tape cassettes from, no parents spoiling me with multiple albums of a biblical figure who along with two American teens were driven to suicide, no way I’d be allowed to leave the house in BDSM regalia, and more importantly, no chance of convincing me anyway, thanks to “Johnny B. Goode”
The earliest shift began in 2008, not during, but after their first Australian tour with Halford at the helm. I didn’t grasp why he was referring to himself as Nostradamus draped in sequenced cloak and brandished staff, but by then, I had of course become acquainted with the many anthems and setlist staples that followed. Rejoicing afterwards, I watched as a drunken fan staggered past the uber-hip, Faker fans leaving a neighbouring music venue where he proceeded to screech ‘Siiiiinner’ into their unsuspecting faces. I understood the antagonistic, intoxicated, metal-empowered antic, but as much as I really wanted to, I couldn’t reach a level so bold as to scream directly into the face of the enemy.
Now can you say you’re a fan without spending time with each album? If rock fans make up 38 percent of people who still listen to full albums, then it was an honour to contribute to that statistic and then some when I finally sat down with Judas Priest. It coincided with a fatigue for keeping on the pulse of every band pushing the genre millimetres forward and so the floodgates of nostalgia finally burst wide open. Not content to simply rediscover old favourites, I militantly retraced metal’s history and filled in every overlooked blank, absorbing seminal acts from Blue Cheer to, well, Judas Priest. It wasn’t a matter of casually listening either; I needed to memorise the entire Ju-discography or have my licence revoked. The challenge was a minimum of three listens per album, then multiple one-off chronological listens until it sank in. And despite an exhaustion reserved for other acts, from Rocka Rolla to Firepower, I never once tired of their almighty catalogue, and so I just kept on listening.
What I learned was that the darkness in that manic, shrill vocal was a profound sadness in disguise. The twin guitar attack could be separated as Downing and Tipton’s unique strikes took shape, the onslaught of drummers were impeccably suited to each evolution, and the considered authorship of menacing to sordid tales refused to wane over five decades. Side note – I’ve become privy to an apparent NWOBHM (specifically Iron Maiden) influence (read: rip off) over the years, which seems all the more ridiculous to me now.
Maiden, to their credit, were the full package from day one: style, imagery, ability – they had it in spades and since they were never broke… Whereas Priest, although a brand unto themselves, appeared to be fighting for their place upon the iron throne and you championed that ever-evolving beast all the way. Occasionally they leaned into musical trends, sure, but they always succeeded, and their success typically outweighed the most heralded metallic novice of whichever decade they were contending with.
Redemption has since morphed into obsession (concerts, vinyl, t-shirts, books, action figures), and I can Stab! Punch! anyone who criticises me for running late to the party, which is better than not having made it at all damn it.
One Saturday evening I caught an episode of Rage hosted by none other than Judas Priest themselves, and true to convention, their selection of metal favourites concluded with prime cuts from their own videography and well… um, to be honest, those early videos are still a bit, hmmm…
I really wish someone had just handed me a record!
