Judas Priest's Reviews
Hell Bent For Leather (Average Rating: 8.06 out of 10)
First Judas Priest standout (Rated this album with 8 out of 10)
Reviewed by
sdbaker70
from Phoenix, Arizona United States
With the sound straddling the fence between metal and hard rock, and temporarily dropping the mythical, depressive undertones of the earlier release, Rob Halford takes some testosterone and drops an octave, Tipton plugs in the Les Paul, and the rest of the band go about making a rock and roll record. If you look at the ratings en masse, you would think that 'Stained Class', a very different record released earlier in 1978, is the better record because the sound preempts their later work, but it was 'Killing Machine' (released in the U.S. with a more historically appropriate title, 'Hell Bent for Leather') that boasted two classics that have NEVER left the Judas Priest live set - "Hell Bent for Leather" and the Fleetwood Mac cover, "Green Manalishi". The same cannot be said of Priest's two other forays into decidedly non-metal music ('Point of Entry' (1981) and 'Turbo' (1986)). Perhaps, more importantly, 'Hell Bent for Leather' also changed the face of metal music - after all, it was the imagery invoked on the title cut and the subsequent tour that produced the leather-and-chains look that was so big in the 1980s. (And who would have known Rob Halford was bisexual!)The bonus studio cut ("Fight for Your Life") is an early incarnation of "Rock Hard Ride Free" (from 'Defenders of the Faith' (1984), with no intro, a lame chorus, and weaker guitar parts. The studio cut is a live version of "Riding on the Wind" (circa 1983) (probably from the same show as "Devil's Child" on the 'Screaming for Vengeance' reissue).
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