Review Summary: For Preist, it's an entirely new beast. For everyone else, it's an uninteresting power metal album that we've all heard before and tries nothing new.
Judas Priest will always be recognized as one of the most famous metal bands in history, but whether or not they deserve that title is questionable. Although Priest is a name practically every first world citizen knows, I had never heard anything by them up until the age of 14. Judging by the hype they got, I pictured a Maiden-esque or Metallica-esque metal band with heavy riffage, awesome vocals about metal topics, and songs that made you jump from your seat and mosh due to the insane badassery the songs encompassed. When I realized the mass majority of JP's discography comprised of lame hair metal and mainstream hard rock, I thought it was a joke, like a buddy had swapped out my British Steel cassette with something by Ratt or Whitesnake. Seriously, basic chords, generic “yah rock on!” lyrics, simple beats; this was not the Priest I was expecting, and I did not care too much for it. People compared these simpletons to Maiden?
Thankfully, Priest have a few actually metal albums, their most popular, both critically and popularity wise, Painkiller. It shows a stark departure from the previous hard rock sound into a more focus sound in power metal, speed metal, and metal that was heavier than the usual billed heavy metal, almost borderline thrash metal for a few moments. This is the reason why probably most people love it so much. It doesnt matter if it is bad or unoriginal or uninteresting, if a rock band releases the 'dark' and 'heavy' album, people immediately love it. Because trust me, this album is nothing interesting at all.
The title track is easily the most powerful song here, but the album struggles to follow it. Every song on here is just your average hard metal speed chugs and “dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-DUNNN” riffs that everyone and their goldfish has heard before. “Leather Rebel” immediately opens with an upper-neck guitar riff that has been used by every up-and-coming garage metal band, probably in a song titled something even less creative than “Leather Rebel”. “One Shot At Glory” is saddeningly unoriginal; sure it's pretty heavy and 'cool' but I'd be hardpressed to find anyone who had never heard any of the riffage before. “Night Crawler” is a metal song about a killer; how innovative. Somebody get Slayer on the line because we have a new metal topic at the front door. Take a wild guess what “Metal Meltdown” is about. Every song deals with typical speed metal topics like rocking hard, going out all guns blazing, battles, and being awesome; some originality wouldn't hurt. Take someone like Chuck Schuldiner who wrote about child innocents, hidden symbolism in life, hypocrisy, irony, questioning religion in an open-minded way, and accepting death as an inevitable passage of life. The man openly covered the title track on his final opus and an epic opener into the best closer in metal, but lots of changes to the riffs, lyrics, and solos were made. Though Chuck also wrote all of his music in unusual time signatures like 9/8, 11/4, 5/8, and so on, while this entire album is written in the basic 4/4.
Rob Halford has always been the highlight of most of Priest's material, but for whatever reason, he decided to spend the entire album shrieking like a retarded falcon. His upper register monotonous squawking makes the title track and “All Guns Blazing” difficult to listen to. Thankfully he returns to actual decent singing voice in “Night Crawler” and “One Shot At Glory” but for the most part, what was he thinking? He spends the majority of the album sounding like his testicles are being crushed by a cinderblock, something Halford would probably like but I digress. If he used his real voice for the entire album I'd rate this a full star higher.
As it is, the album has cool moments scattered out. In fact, the majority of this album is 'pretty cool' by basic metal standards, but is it interesting? Is it innovative? Is it trying something new? The answers to all of those questions is a resounding no. The solos are pretty cool, but they are nothing new. The riffs are pretty cool, but they are nothing new. Some of the lyrics are cool, but they are nothing new. Halford's squeals are pretty cool, but...no, actually they suck. This album is admittedly 'pretty cool' but this is nothing new to someone who listens to any metal. For Priest, this was something entirely new, but for everyone else, this was just another metal release, and that's how it should be remembered.
Pros
"Painkiller"
Cons
Unoriginal and predictable
Retarded falcon shrieks from Halford
Boring riffs straight from a Nickelodeon cartoon
Generic riffs about metal stuff
