Judas Priest
What the gory Friday the 13th series is to movies, this U.K. quintet is to rock. There are brain-bludgeoning guitar chords (thanks to ax wielders Glenn Tipton and K. K. Downing), antiaircraft drumming by Dave Holland, sledgehammer bass lines by Ian Hill. All this is organized under the primal scream of Rob Halford. It's almost funny. If your ears can pick their way through this musical minefield to the lyrics, they're likely to hear such Orwellian fantasies as Electric Eye: "You think you've private lives/Think nothing of the kind/ There is no true escape/ I'm watching all the time." Not that you might expect a band with a name like Judas Priest to specialize in moon-June-spoon tunes, but to these headbangers, heavy metal seems to mean a lead pipe.
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