The heaviness pretty much all started for me when I was a young teen, with the earliest Judas Priest that came out in the mid to late 70's. Now that I think about it, they could be one of the reasons why I don't put a lot of focus on vocals in some of my music these days. Since I grew up listening to everything Rob Halford, nearly every other singer pales in comparison anyway.
I was...let's say, 'under the influence', when I heard a friend play "Victim of Changes", from their second album, Sad Wings of Destiny. I couldn't find that one at the store, so the first cassette I can remember buying was their third, Sin After Sin. Released in 1977, it was produced by Roger Glover of Deep Purple, and it's one of my favorite Judas Priest recordings. I can't tell you how many copies I went through before the digital age began.
Halford's incredible piercing screams abound in "Dissident Aggressor", which I think is the album's most pummeling track. I hadn't heard anything like it at the time and the Tipton-Downing dynamic guitar duo blew me away. I was hooked from then on.
After listening to Sin After Sin again for the first time in a while, and analyzing more deeply, I remember it was about the time when some music started affecting me on a deep emotional level, too. Tossed between divorced parents and feeling abandoned, I often turned to music for comfort and release. I recall that I could really relate to the lyrics in the "Here Come The Tears". All alone. No one cares. Won't somebody love me? I never knew music could be so powerfully touching. Wow...it's all coming back to me. I needa minute, here they come.
Okay, I'm back. So If you haven't heard this album in a while, it's time to revisit your old friend. If you've never heard it and you don't have it, then you should be ashamed of yourself. There's nothing like early Judas Priest and Sin After Sin. Nothing.
White Wizzard, also known as the more traditional half of Holy Grail (who were initially called Sorcerer), are die-hard-in-denim:
They refuse to acknowledge that any time has passed (musically speaking, anyway) since, say, 1985. They wear tons of band patches proudly. They won't detune.
I admire that. I admire their taking a stand.
Unfortunately, it's also their major problem. It appears their muse is both very demanding and very narrow-minded.
Short version of Flying Tigers (sweet cover, though, huh?)-- the first half is a bad Hanoi Rocks/ Y&T cover band; the second a great Iron Maiden cover band. First half of album-- southern California cock-rock, mid-80s-ish; second half, NWOBHM, same time period. The second half is noticeably better and more natural and self-assured.
Look, don't get me wrong-- you can do "traditional" metal well without doing anything new with it. Witness: In Solitude, Ghost, Devil et al.. White Wizzard just never make it there for long.
Examples:
"Starchild" is a stilted power ballad (remember those?) that never quite gets off the ground; the title track is very Maiden-- lyrically and melodically it's a tribute to/reframing of "Aces High," (and vocalist Wyatt Anderson does actually keep up with Bruce Dickinson), but it doesn't have the same sense of tension and release that any good song does (particularly anything on Powerslave).
Lyrically, a lot of mentioning of the devil, going crazy, etc.
Power metal, traditional metal, whatever, lives and dies by its hooks (something extreme would do well to learn), and overall Flying Tigers falls short, hook-wise. To me the best White Wizzard song is still "High Speed GTO."
White Wizzard are best when they're just rocking out, Maiden/Priest style, and tracks like "Night Stalker," though generic, work this well. "Fall of Atlantis" with its opening middle-eastern-sounding riff, also rocks out unselfconsciously, sounding like, of all bands, CJSS.
"Demons and Diamonds" is lushly evocative and hints at what this band could really do if they just let loose and composed whatever came into their hands.
It seems like the problem with Flying Tigers, and with White Wizzard in general, is that they're so eager to be the perfect replica of an early-80s metal band, they force every track to sound like that, even when it feels like the riffs don't want to fit-- they contort them into the format. It seems like if they'd just play whatever they feel and stop pushing it through the King Kobra-strainer they'd make a hell of an album-- there's a lot of obvious talent here.
It's fun stuff. It won't change your world if you're over 13, but it's cool stuff, a throwback to a time where vocals reigned supreme (and perhaps should've?). It's got its flaws, but it's still definitely worth checking out if you've a soft spot for classic traditional metal.
You have to let the magnitude of that sentence sink in. There I was. 17 years old. A raging, rampaging sack of testosterone, insatiable musical lust. . . and I had a car. Let’s don’t dwell on what type of car it was (a 1974 Fiat 4-door sedan with huge rubber bumpers and a 50 hp engine.). Let’s just focus on the car part. I had a car. I had wheels. I was free.
That meant I could get out of the small then-ranch town I grew up in and head for the big City. Ok, so the big City was a town of about 30,000 people 7 miles away, but don’t you get it? They had a record store--several of them, including a Tower Records. I remember pulling (er . . . sputtering) my car into the Tower parking lot, my pockets full of money I’d slaved to get working 8 ½ hour shifts at a local car wash. I wandered the aisles, my eyes agape. I was 17, I had a car, and I had money. The world was my oyster.
I don’t remember everything I bought that day, but I do remember picking up one new cassette. The brand new, just released Judas Priest album, British Steel. I’d never heard Priest before, but thought their album covers were bitchin’. Unleashed in the East was maniacal. Hell Bent for Leather frightened me in a good way. Sin after Sin, Sad Wings . . . the list goes on. But on that day, British Steel had just arrived and I knew I had no choice but to make that the cassette that would christen the tape deck in my new hot rod.
Leaving the parking lot, I popped the cassette in, and my entire world changed. I’d been listening to “metal” for years. Kiss, Aerosmith, AC/DC. Pretty standard suburban/rural kid stuff. The same things everyone listened to. But I wanted more. My musical nomad life had already begun, and I needed to wander, to explore. I had no friends to accompany me on this journey. My high school classmates were content with what they were listening to, so I had to venture out onto that musical crossroads on my own. But nothing could have prepared my tender ears for the sound that suddenly was tearing my speakers apart that day.
“Rapid Fire,” was just that-- an insane, accelerating attack of things that were far too heavy for my heart to bear. My pulse exploded in time to the jackhammer drumbeat. When that heavy-as-heavy guitar came in, I felt reborn. Rejuvenated. Alive, as if for the very first time. I’d never heard the song before but there I was, air-guitaring like a madman, singing along to that incredible Rob Halford voice that made Paul Stanley seem like some fairy boy from neverland. And then came the song's famous mid-break. Halford’s voice spat out words in a flurry, screaming about anvils, and wars, and corrosive subsiding, and KK and Glenn were tearing the world apart on guitars I couldn’t name. Suddenly the universe made sense to me. Suddenly, my virginity had been ripped from my musical womb.
From that moment, I’ve worn my Priest flag with undying pride.
I’m not going to go into every song on this fantastic reissue of the album, other than to say that "The Rage" is still one of the absolute greatest metal songs ever written. You know this album. You know these songs by heart. You’ve lived them in your own way just as I did that day in my Fiat. But I will say that I can still recall the exact moment that “Metal Gods,” kicked in, with that guitar tone. That amazing, so metallic guitar tone. This was no longer pansy-ass Kiss. The guitar sounded so menacing, so alien, so foreign. God damn it, that guitar sounded metal; as if it had been forged in a furnace of fiery steel and was clashing against massive chugging gears. Priest forever defined not just metal for me, but the sound of a guitar that could actually sound like metal.
I won’t bore you about the time I saw them on the Point of Entry Tour, or how I was pressed so close against the stage, that KK Downing actually played his guitar on my face. Those are my private memories. But I will say that this 30th Anniversary Edition does the album justice. The remastered songs sound even more metallic today. The bonus song “Red White & Blue” is cool, and the live cut of “Grinder” decimates. The video of Priest performing the album non-stop, in it’s entirety at a 2009 concert shows the band to be even more imposing than when I saw them as a kid. Ageless and timeless, Halford in particular has become even more of a demented, metal God than he was back in 1980. Dressed head to toe in his full-length leather and denim, he looks fierce and nasty. I don’t care how old he is, he still looks like he could kick my ass.
KK and Glenn are also ageless, as if they’d been locked in some air-tight vortex all these years and suddenly released to unleash all sorts of guitar mayhem on the masses. Ian Hill has been a rock for ages and still anchors the side of the stage like an immovable mass, while Scott Travis beats with fury and passion.
You know the album. You know the band. You need to get this package. Priest are legends and this is their most legendary moment. Past or present, they still rule this world we call metal. And for me that’s just the way it’s supposed to be.
My Fiat is long gone. My Priest flag is still flying high.
--Racer
Deluxe Edition has a third disc, the audio CD of the entire British Steel live concert. Awesome.
Anytime that Racer and I get together and sit down for a meal, the safe bet is that a good two hours will pass with us talking about music. In fact, the last time we met up, I’d say we spent . . . carry the one . . . find the lowest common denominator . . . about ten hours discussing all that is music. And one of the bands that frequented many of those conversations was Judas Priest, which then got me thinking about the band’s first album. Rocka Rolla, for some reason or another, is the red headed bastard child of the Priest catalog, and I’m not totally certain why. I know that when trying to compare it to anything post-British Steel is near impossible simply because the sound and musical direction had changed so much. In actuality, the band’s sound really took the most drastic turn with Hell Bent For Leather. Up to that point, Sad Wings of Destiny and Sin After Sin held fairly close in the pattern set with Rocka Rolla’s fuzzed out, blues-based psychedelia.
So, here it is . . . 1974 and this wee little band out of Birmingham, England releases their debut album and it doesn’t even remotely sound like the style that they would become famous for. Rocka Rolla has more in common with bands such as Poobah, or Sir Lord Baltimore, or Leaf Hound than what we’ve all come to know and love as Judas Priest. But folks . . . that’s not a bad thing! Bob Halford (as he was referred to back then) and his stratospheric pipes, K.K. Downing and Glen (that’s right . . . one ‘n’) Tipton’s dual guitar attack seamlessly shifting from rhythm to lead, Ian Hill’s no frills, played-in-pocket low end, and John Hinch’s steady hand steering the ship, Rocka Rolla is a precursor to the pre-Hell Bent For Leather releases from the Priest. Maybe a little primitive in sound, but when you sit back and listen to the groove and soul to the music, it’s easier to see that this is an overlooked gem.
The title track has long been a favorite tune of mine. The opening guitar riff is laced with those elements that would later make up that classic Priest guitar sound, as my fearless brethren, Racer, has often stated, a tone that actually sounds like metal. Capturing the essence of all that rock that became popular in the early to mid 70’s, “Rocka Rolla” is the most commercial track on the album and has a string of lyrics that I’ve found myself singing when I hadn’t listened to the song in years. Downing and Tipton shine. Between the heavy blues riffage, these ax men whip out some great lead work and give us a glimpse of the great things that would later erupt from their fingers. Halford’s voice borders on crooning lounge singer as he emits this sultry bluesy thing, gruff when he needs to be, but all around smooth. We even get some sneak previews of the higher pitched screams that became the man’s bread and butter. Of special note, check out the harmonica work. Yeah . . . not what one would expect with Judas Priest, but then again, back in 1974, we didn’t know what to expect.
“Never Satisfied” is a bruiser. Every time I hear this, I try to imagine what it would have been like to hear this for the first time in ’74. Sure, at that point, heavy rock wasn’t totally new. Zeppelin had released the Brown Bomber and Sabbath, well . . . was there anything heavier than Sabbath at the time? But, the point is, the guitar tones, the heavy groovin’ rhythms, the smoky whiskey drenched blues voice all worked in tandem to create a menacing sound that taken apart from Priests’ peers would have be otherworldly. Co-penned by the bands original singer, Alan Atkins, “Never Satisfied” has a certain blues-y factor to it, what with the chord progressions and lyrical content, but there’s also this underlying attitude to it that I think bares a semblance to latter day Priest and the metal that they would eventually forge. The guitar solos from on this one are doozies, as well. Soaring and ear splitting, Downing and Tipton were kismet from day one!
The thing with early Judas Priest that really shook my foundations and I found unnerving was their slowed down, psychedelic material; going back to tracks like “Dreamer Deceiver” and “Epitaph” from Sad Wings, and “Last Rose of Summer” from Sin After Sin. By the time I heard the chilled out psyche sounds of “Run of the Mill” and the space-y Winter Medley, I was pretty numb to Judas Priest of old. Now listening to this stuff, it’s a hundred times cooler than ever! “Run of the Mill” is packed with these great emotional interludes and dynamic shifts of metal that make the song a quasi-epic. The mini jam section in the middle of the song is laced with LSD as the guitar notes seem to waft through the air like so much pot smoke. All the while, the rhythm section is just humming along in the background, doing what a world class rhythm section is supposed to do. Slowed down tracks like these are, in my opinion, when Halford shines the brightest. Dude has a voice that can melt glaciers!
Rounding out the album with a hard rocking edge is “Dying to Meet You,” a song that initially slithers out of the speakers rather than leaping out like so many rockers. The slow distorted riff is as imposing as any out there, and then when the dual guitarists kick their rigs into a clean tone and Halford’s Sinatra-like vocals croon . . . phew! “Dying to Meet You” reflects the tumultuous times well with lyrics that paint a dark and vivid image of the psychosis of those going to war. Then, the song bursts into a galloping rhythmic beast, kicked into overdrive by a guitar solo that will kick your ass into orbit around the moon. Halford’s vocals switch up with the change in mood of the latter half of the tune and we hear the makings of classic Priest. Heavy, driving, dark and imposing, yet tasteful with a touch of classical headiness.
I could never with a straight face say that Rocka Rolla is my favorite Priest album, but I’m sure I could create some bizarre category where it would rest comfortably in the top five. Maybe, the “best 70’s psyche blues that no one talks about” list . . . anyway, most fans of Judas Priest don’t pay too much attention to the band prior to British Steel, and even fewer before Hell Bent For Leather or Stained Class. Rocka Rolla isn’t the leather clad metal militia that the band became in the 80’s. In fact, the band comes across as star crossed hippies who were dissatisfied with all of the peaceniks of the day and then experimented with hallucinogens to further their musical vision. Where Rocka Rolla stands in comparison with the heavy fussed out, acid blues rock of the same time period is beyond me, and nor do I really care. I hear a collection of songs that have a good groove, a warm though imposing tone, and melodies that I can’t help but sing to every time that I hear them. - Pope JTE
