Metal Gods

Judas Priest

In 1983 Rob Reiner's This Is Spinal Tap faux 'rockumentary' brilliantly parodied the arcane trappings of heavy metal. Critics and audiences loved it. Heavy metal bands hated it, Scorpions guitarist Michael Schenker even walking out on a screening. But then Germans aren't renowned for their senses of humour. Neither are heavy metallers. German heavy metallers? Forget it.

Why was Spinal Tap so bitterly received by the metal fraternity? Well, let's see... because it was essentially fact. What made it so funny was that it didn't need to stretch the truth, for the truth was bordering on the farcical already. If ever a genre had deserved to be skewered it was heavy metal, and Spinal Tap was merciless in its treatment.

You didn't need to look too far to see where Reiner got his inspiration. There were a plethora of OTT, egocentric, taste bereft metal bands around. Yet one stands above the rest, a band whose career resembles the twisted machinations of Spinal Tap. Judas Priest is that band.

The Birmingham five piece celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2004 with a reunion tour with original vocalist Rob Halford. Those 30 years have been quite something, including the following highlights:

* In 1986 two American youths attempted to commit suicide after listening to Judas Priest's Stained Class album. One succeeded, while the other was left severely disfigured. This resulted in one of the most bizarre court cases in history, with Priest being accused of encouraging the act by putting backwards messages on their records.

* Ex-drummer of ten years Dave Holland was imprisoned for attempting to rape an intellectually handicapped youth he was teaching the drums.

* In the late 1980s, the band recorded three songs with trenchant pop production team Stock Aitken Waterman, who had been responsible for early Bananarama, Kylie Minogue, and Rick Astley. This recording experiment was subsequently shelved.

* A documentary filmed in the car park outside a Priest show in America, Heavy Metal Parking Lot, has become a huge cult classic. It portrays the rabid behaviour of the bands fans as they prepare for the show, and it's been referenced in numerous rock videos.

* On the 1984 Defenders tour, half a million dollars damage was done at New York's Madison Square Garden by the band's crazed fans tearing the seating to shreds.

* 1986's Turbo was the first metal album recorded in digital - perhaps inspiring the notorious 'dolby/doubly' scene in This Is Spinal Tap.

* Vocalist Rob Halford came out in the 1990s, validating a longterm fetish for leather and studs.

* Priest are one of the finest practitioners of that metal signature, dual guitarists. Glenn Tipton and KK Downing's razor sharp combination playing was mimicked by any number of 80s acts.

With this kind of vintage, it needs to be asked - where are they now? Because for at least a decade Judas Priest have been off the radar, languishing in the ghetto that suddenly entrapped many traditional metal acts in the 1990s, as the form waned in popularity.

Without the charismatic Halford at the helm (he was pursuing a Tap-ish solo career - fairly successfully too) the band were drifting rudderless in a world that was no longer seduced by their charms. With vocalist Tim 'Ripper' Owens (now with Iced Earth) Priest were in a holding pattern, seemingly waiting for Halford's return.

While they recorded two albums with Owens, Jugulator (1997) and Demolition (2001), it was patently clear the arrangement was a short term one - for both parties.

"Tim had been seeing it coming for a long time,” explains founding Priest bassist Ian Hill, his Brummy burr sounding exactly like Timothy Spall from Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. He's on the phone from England to promote the spanking new album, Angel Of Retribution.

“Of all the interviews I did when he was with the band, there wasn't one journalist who didn't ask me when Rob was coming back. And with hindsight, it's beneficial for Tim to go and make it in his own right, rather than with Judas Priest. As long as he was with this band, he was perceived by most people to be filling in for Rob. It was very unfair on Tim, he's a tremendous vocalist, he's a great showman, he deserves to get on and I'm sure he will do."

But the Judas Priest story began in gloomy northern England in the early 1970s. Birmingham, the country's second largest city, was a grimy, bleak, depressing industrial sprawl. Many of its housing estates were virtually slums, and opportunities were few. Tipton once worked in the foundries of British Steel, whose moniker would be borrowed for one of Priest's greatest albums in 1980.

"It's a hard start in life," Downing has said. "You don't really know what's going on with yourself. When everything was against you, you're swimming against the fucking tide in every which way but lose - parents, schooling, breaking the law. It was rough."

The nascent Priest dropped the bluesy Rocka Rolla in 1974, before progressing to the more-metal-than-metal imagery of later 1970s efforts such as Sin After Sin (1977) and Killing Machine (1979). This encapsulated the exaggerated leather and studs image, Halford's penchant for riding on stage on a Harley, and the lyrical themes ('Beyond The Realms Of Death', 'Take On The World'). All this shaped not only Priest's future direction, but greatly influenced the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, which in turn spawned a legion of metal warriors.

But it was 1980's albums British Steel, Screaming For Vengeance (1982), Defenders Of The Faith (1984), and Turbo (1986) that threw the band under a broader spotlight. While the music and imagery had a distinctly futuristic aspect, Priest remained stubbornly of the heavy metal ilk, capturing the imaginations of audiences worldwide.

The demise of Judas Priest-style traditional metal was a result of various music trends. Firstly, thrash metal, while being influenced by the band, largely washed away the excesses of the past in favour of a stripped back approach. Then, early 1990s rock further distanced itself from the connotations of 'heavy metal', which was viewed as something of a joke for its macho imagery, extravagant stage sets, and belief in musical virtuosity. Amidst this, Halford chose to pursue solo work after 1990's Painkiller album.

"It was strange," muses Hill. "At the end of that last tour we did we'd been working constantly, it was album-tour-album-tour, with very little break. We were getting ready for a couple of years off. I think Rob wanted to carry on, and he asked if anybody minded him doing his own album. But the solo album turned into a solo project. And we drifted apart, and things got nasty there for a while, but it's all behind us now."

The Priest line-up that recorded the eclectically brilliant Angel of Retribution is considered to be the definitive one, despite the fact drummer Scott Travis only joined the band in 1989. Hill reckons there is an irreplaceable chemistry with this version.

"We just slotted straight back in," he says of the reunion with Halford. "Apart from drummers, it's been the same line-up since about 1972-73, and Scott's been with us 15 or 16 years. I think when a band has been together for that long then the component parts add up to more than the whole. And when one component goes missing like when Rob went it detracts greatly from the whole. Now he's back, everything's back together, the chemistry is the same."

Another reunion of sorts is Priest's resigning with Sony Records, having released the two albums without Halford on smaller metal labels, such as SPV in Europe and JVC in Japan.

"We wanted to get back with Sony, they have the large majority of our back catalogue, apart from the two Ripper albums, and the very first two albums. We just wanted to put the old team back together, and they were more than happy to take us on, in fact were eager to take us on which is great news. And of course they're a worldwide company as well, they can release it worldwide which keeps everything concise, keeps it all together."

The subtext is that Priest are keen to again reach the heights it did in the mid-1980s. As Hill says, the releases with Owens reached a smaller market, which in turn led to smaller audiences at gigs, and smaller production budgets. For a band that once had stupendous pyrotechnic and lighting productions, this was something of a fall from grace.

"It did miss that big sense of theatre, which ourselves and other bands have been known for in the past. Over the last 10 or 15 years metal became very fragmented, bands started to play metal of a certain type, you were a speed band, or a death band, or you were gothic or grunge. Heavy metal is about everything, it's not just about the harder side. There's a lighter, softer side to metal as well. And it lost that in the 90s. And as a result your fanbase diminishes, you're not as attractive to as many people. But now I think there's a resurgence in traditional metal, the versatility and variety is coming back into metal these days. Which is good news."

Gavin Bertram.