Published on Mar 18, 2005
Stained Class represented Judas Priest at their most
menacing. Their most loud. Their most METAL. However, Judas Priest
was having to reexamine their place in music in the early ’80s.
They still had a leg up on the competition; Quiet Riot and Def
Leppard were still about a year or so away from making it big. The
public’s appetite for metal was also whetted with the radio
inundated with saccharine ballads and new wave.
Judas Priest was able to find a nice balance between their
heaviness of old and embracing elements of studio polish and pop
with
Screaming For Vengeance. The album is obviously best known
for spawning their biggest hit: “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’,”
which is an odd sort of classic. The song isn’t particularly
memorable — it’s definitely not Judas Priest’s best song — but it
represented Priest’s best attributes, mainly Halford’s voice and
the gristle-free guitar assault of K.K. Downing and Glenn
Tipton.
Fans thinking their beloved Priest of old (or olde for the
middle-ages-worshipping fans of bands like Dio and Iron Maiden) had
the scary opening track “The Hellion” and the title track to
appease themselves. “Electric Eye” and “Pain and Pleasure” were
also great staples of Priest at their early-’80s finest.
Screaming For Vengeance marked the beginning of Priest’s
artistic (but not commercial) slide for the rest of the ’80s. They
would return to form almost a decade later with
Painkiller. More radio-friendly, party-oriented bands (read
Def Leppard and Quiet Riot) would overshadow Judas Priest in 1983
and 1984. Still, it’s hard to imagine these bands doing nearly as
well had it not been for
Screaming For Vengeance‘s mix of leather and bubblegum.