Judas Priest Stained Class

Judging the title of this webpage was obvious that one of my reviews was going to be about the innovators of heavy metal non others than Judas Priest!

Formed in 1969 in West Midlands,the british group took their name from Bob Dylan's song "The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest". After some line-up changes the band released their first album "Rocka Rolla" on Gull Records in the fall of 1974. By 1978 the english rockers where about to release their fourth album, a far cry from the previous blues based hard rock of "Sad wings..." and ''Sin after sin".

"We've always placed a lot of importance on what's going on, because it's what the kids want."

                                                                                                   Glenn Tipton

                                                                                                   

When ''Stained Class" was recorded, the british music papers where devoting a sizable of their coverage on punk bands like Sex Pistols and The Dammed. Suddenly hard rock was considered unfashionable by the young audience, something like a dinosaur of music industry.

The best way to counter that was to take the agression of punk and to inject that into rock music, of wich Priest did and that's how metal was born.

"Our drummer at the time, Les Binks, was left-handed,"

                                                   K.K.Downing   

The album  starts with Exciter, a track that spawned the speed metal genre and inspired the name of a well known canadian act. The drum solo performed by Les Binks at the beginning is the first usage of double bass,one year before Motorhead's Overkill. The guitar duel between Tipton and Downing is amazing and let's not forget about Halford's high pitched vocals. Lyrically,the song is about a god like figure with the mission to save humanity as it follows:

                                                       Stand by for Exciter

                                                       Salvation is his task    

                                                       Stand by for Exciter

                                                       Here he comes now      

     

The album is full of historical(like in Savage, a song about the killings of indians) and sci fi(Invader is about an alien attack on Earth) themes, a more mature approach than their contemporaries.

Beyond the Realms of Death is simply the best Priest song ever, a ballad that should be up there with Stairway to Heaven.

Stained Class was realased on February 10th 1978 and was the first Judas Priest album to appear on Billboard charts.

The album also sparked a world wide tour and was popular in Japan.

Here is the Live in Japan video:

Stained Class track list:

Exciter

White heat,Red hot

Better by you,Better than me

Stained Class

Invader

Saints in hell

Savage

Beyond the realms of death

Heroes end