Friday, October 7, 2022

Blood Red Skies, Judas Priest

Can it really be I haven't put JP in the Metal Friday rotation since December of last year? Fixing that, stat.

Priest is on my mind a bit more these days because I'll be seeing the Metal Gods in just over a week's time. On Sunday Oct. 16 I'm heading into Boston with a friend of mine to see them at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway Park.

And get this, his 13-year-old son is coming too.

The kid LOVES Judas Priest, and was inspired to pick up a flying V guitar in large part due to their music. He's a damned good player.

This is his first ever concert. He just found out. How's that for a birthday present?

Today I'm going with Blood Red Skies. I can't believe I haven't featured this song yet.

Very, very bold claim coming--the studio version of Blood Red Skies MIGHT be Rob Halford's best vocal performance. Unfounded? Well, listen first, then decide. 1:15 on... yikes. 6:28--he surely shattered glass in the studio.

I don't think anyone else on the planet could sing this, like this. Halford's vocals are ethereal, transcendent, otherworldly on this one, which features lyrics straight out of the Terminator. 

Apocalypse--wow. 



6 comments:

  1. When I saw them perform just after Firepower came out (great show), my wife and I were surprised at how diverse the audience was. Really healthy mix of young and old, men and women, people from seemingly all walks of life. We were talking with a black woman who came with her 16 year old daughter and they were raving about the show and how they were driving halfway across the country in a few weeks to see Metallica.

    Ram It Down is an underrated album and very much shows that Painkiller wasn't just something that came out of nowhere. I think people don't give it enough credit because they were still seething over Turbo.

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  2. "Can it really be I haven't put JP in the Metal Friday rotation since December of last year?"

    Just burn your JP fan-card, Murphy. There's no penance possible for something like that.

    "Ram It Down is an underrated album and very much shows that Painkiller wasn't just something that came out of nowhere. I think people don't give it enough credit because they were still seething over Turbo."

    Quite right, Andy. In fact, I was just discussing that with a metal buddy the other day. TURBO generated, if not ill-will, then a sense of apathy in many Priest fans. By the time RID came out, a lot of us were more excited by Metallica and Megadeth etc. Momentum is very, very important in the music industry and JP lost some of that after TURBO.

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  3. Am I a bad person for actually preferring Turbo over Ram it Down? I do like both albums, even though I see their weaknesses. They each contain at least one stone-cold classic (Blood Red Skies obviously, but also Reckless/Turbo, IMO).

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  4. I saw them back in 2014 (I think)--such a great show. I was pleasantly surprised when they did "Victim of Changes." And they blew the roof off the place with that one. For me, they're second only to Maiden.

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  5. Jason--I also saw them in 2014, a big year for me with JP as I got to meet three members of the band. A story I will tell here, some day. They alternate with Maiden as my favorite band, depending on the day of the week.

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  6. I'm definitely Turbo > Ram It Down, too, Murph. And it's not particularly close.

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