The best album by a band being its own cover band, ever.
(Rated this album with 10 out of 10) Reviewed by
An Amazon.com Customer
This is a weird thing. Rock bands often hit a crossroads, a point at which one or several key members quit, get fired, or die. Then what? Does the band hang it up in response to the loss? Does the band carry on without the lost members and without replacing them? Or does the band try to replace them, risking ruining the past? Most bands that replace key members -- that usually means guitarists and vocalists -- become pathetic parodies of themselves. Depends whether the band is about people or songs. There could be replacement lead guitarists in the Stones and Wyman could quit but with Jagger-Richards-Watts it IS the Stones. KISS can have rotating members but Gene and Paul need to be there. Deep Purple has carried on without Blackmore and Gillan both at times. So what defines Judas Priest? Halford created a vocal style, but the music was/is the sum of its parts and as noted the key to Priest is the twin guitar assault of KK Downing and Glenn Tipton. Deciding to restart with Ripper Owens was either ballsy or lame depending on your viewpoint. Ripper -- bizarrely, surrealistically -- was the crooner in a Priest COVER BAND of all things. This reminds me of when I visited the Pentagon and in the MacArthur hall were the pants worn by Gregory Peck in the movie. Strange. But...Ripper rips and the boys are obviously glad to be back. When Ripper raps, it makes one cringe (he's wailing about heavy metal fury blah blah blah with heavy processed echo to frantic crowds of believers in small halls) but the music itself shreds with a fury. Screaming for vengeance indeed, Priest -- as a performing vehicle -- is back, and sounding tremendous. Let's see if they can do as well with some new music as they can being their own cover band (Jugulator was a dissapointment).
