Screaming For Vengeance

Judas Priest

Sony, 1982

http://www.judaspriest.com

REVIEW BY: Sean McCarthy

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED: 03/18/2005

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.my_heart_sings_the_harmony_web_ad_alt_250

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.

Rating: B+

User Rating: Not Yet Rated


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