Published on Oct 21, 1997
“Boy,” the reader must be thinking, “Chris’s been listening to a
lot of metal lately.”
Well, you can blame today’s selection on loyal reader Trent
Nakagawa. Last time he and I corresponded via e-mail, he mentioned
that we hadn’t reviewed anything by seminal British heavy metal
screamers Judas Priest. Names of albums like
Stained Class (complete with the alleged hidden message in
the album… we’ll talk about those when I do review that album)
and
Unleashed In The East.
Well, the only reason that
British Steel was chosen was because that’s what was the
first tape my 18-month-old grabbed out of a box she knows not to go
into. (Sorry to my friend at CMC International Records, who is
probably disappointed I didn’t wait one week for
Jugulator to come out. Hey, Brian, I still have a backlog of
discs you sent me that I’m working on.)
British Steel could be seen as the first album in Judas
Priest’s glory days. A major marketing push by Columbia, combined
with the popularity of the track “Living After Midnight” brought
Rob Halford and crew out from the club circuit where they had been
paying their dues since 1969, when the group first formed. The band
was also going through yet another change on the drum throne: out
was drummer number four, Les Binks, and in was drummer number five,
Dave Holland. (Sonething must have clicked — Holland remained the
band’s drummer until 1989.)
Judas Priest’s two-guitar attack of founding member K.K. Downing
and Glenn Tipton was the key to this band’s sound, though on
British Steel the crunching guitars are toned down a bit.
For that matter, the whole production on this one takes a hit for
the worse (though a portion of my cassette liner was missing when I
bought it, so I can’t nail the producer responsible). And it’s not
just the guitars that take a hit in the mix; I would have preferred
Holland’s drums to have more treble.
The songs themselves on
British Steel show some improvement for the band. While
efforts on early albums like
Rocka Rolla and
Sad Wings Of Destiny were a bit immature in the musical
department,
British Steel has some good, solid efforts. Besides “Living
After Midnight,” cuts like “Breaking The Law,” “Steeler” and
“Grinder” are all numbers that show how much this band grew.
Their connection to their fans has always been evident, but is
brought out to the front for what I think was the first time in the
song “Don’t Have To Be Old To Be Wise.” Halford and Judas Priest
have always let their fans know that the kids are what matters,
especially in the realm of heavy metal. The song itself is a decent
track, though it may seem corny to the parents who just wouldn’t
understand. I should know; I’m one of those parents now myself.
Halford’s vocals, normally running through all levels of
hystrionics, are quite controlled on
British Steel. He seems to be concentrating more on the song
than seeing how loud he can scream – a fact which sometimes made a
Judas Priest song special.
But while
British Steel shows how far the band had grown to that
point, they still hadn’t reached perfection in their craft. Some of
the songwriting flashes back to their early, more melodramatic
days, like “Metal Gods,” while other pseudo-speed metal numbers
like “Rapid Fire” don’t work as well as similar efforts in that
vein (one that comes to mind is “Exciter”)
This isn’t a bad album — not by a long shot. It is a solid
effort for the heavy metal genre, and is a decent snapshot of the
metal scene just before it exploded into the big thing of the ’80s.
But something in my brain tells me that there would be limited draw
for this album — either for aging metalheads like myself (who was
testing the eardrums of other drivers with this tape Monday
afternoon) or kids getting into metal and looking to rebel against
their parents.