The Heavy Metal Thread
Judas Priest - Firepower (2018)
Genres: Heavy Metal
Judas Priest were lighter than what metal should be interpreted as for many of their early albums, and that all chanced with the surprise comeback album Painkiller, which perfected the metal tropes that the same band's earlier albums helped to influence. They had steered into Metal Church and Metallica territory and reinvented themselves. Unfortunately, nobody liked what came after that until almost 30 years later, when these 70-year-olds put out Firepower, their second comeback album. Now Judas Priest are once again the talk of the metal world. However, does this even come close to Painkiller?
As far as attacking the entire heavy metal genre goes, most of these songs are exercises in one or another typical stle of heavy metal. The album dives into speed, power, thrash and even arena rock territory without ever fully crossing those borders, allowing Judas Priest to both stay true to their Painkiller sound while addressing the variety of the genre they influenced. And boy, does this trope fest give you ALL the goods. Each melody and riff is quite catchy and packed with energy that almost reaches Painkiller heights. Right from the get-go, you know what your getting as its opening title track punches you in the face with its own energy. And even though it's obvious that Halford's voice aged, he's still able to hold the metallic sound of it very well, perfectly fitting into Priest's style yet again. And lyrically, the album's loaded with all the metal themes of the classic age: the warnings against Satanism and the horror stories that come from it, the machine guns blasting over the battlefield, comparing your sex appeal to weather like you're suddenly a Norse god, etc. etc. And these lyrics are all pretty good and easy to sing along with.
So basically, you kind of have to say that this is the kind of album that's been done before, not only by Priest before but by other bands. I occasionally even got a WASP feel. The real clincher here is that none of these tropes are poorly delivered. So the fact that these guys can stay this good after a series of failures between Painkiller and this shows that they're becoming more aware of what they must be, and it looks like the success stemming from their awareness carries on into Invincible Shield. Firepower is one of the most spirited metal albums of the 2010's. If you don't like heavy metal at all, you might find this generic. If you do, you really should check this out. If it was released around the time British Steel was, it would be one of their original classics. On the other hand, you could say it bears a strong nostalgic touch thanks to its spirit, as is the justification for "pizza thrash," I mean, let's be honest. Priest weren't quite this metallic and loud in the 80's, and this sounds just like an 80's album by another band that was heavier at the time, so the weird thing is that while this is a generic but good album, it's also an album that the band HASN'T DONE BEFORE.
86 / 100
Judas Priest - Invincible Shield (2024)
Genres: Heavy Metal
Six years later, right? Seems a bit long to wait for another Judas Priest album after they've had a SECOND comeback. But maybe that length was taken for the band to really hone their skills again and try to improve. If that's the case, they succeeded, because their new album is some purified metal with a nostalgic feel that also acts as a step forward from the overly-80's Firepower, being its own thing and having been seen as the next essential in the Priest catalog.
I was totally taken by surprise with those totally-synthed up Def Leppard drums and guitar sounds for the intro, which eventually becomes a flat-out power metal song on par with the works of Gamma Ray. Halford's voice and the backing voices work together with a pure and shining harmony that to me is like a metal version of Simon and Garfunkel. Halford's gotten a stronger hold on his voice, which can be clearly heard on this album, even while the production assaults you with a wild range of metal noises and effects. Two songs in and this is already a huge improvement over Firepower. Of course, by the time the title-track came along, I was afraid the album was going to be quite samey, which is something that Firepower largely avoided until the last third, as it was too long of an album not to fall victim to it. Thankfully, the title track had levels of metal energy that rival the Arrange Edition of the F-Zero X soundtrack.
The entire first half was a bit samey with difference largely just going to the tempos, so whatever weirdness came from the intro wasn't going to be common. Thankfully, side B starts with a ballad: Crown of Horns, so there change in pace is powerful without damaging the flow, as this song is quite a good ballad that shows that Halford still has vocal range. And despite its ballad status, this doesn't stop the instrumentation from being thick and featuring a dense metal atmosphere. Of course, the album goes right back into thrash territory immediately afterwards, but this is still good because nothing on Side A was as heavy lightning-speed-driven as the song As God as My Witness. So I interpret this as the album doing two new things on Side B to compensate for a samey side A. This sounds familiar: Hounds of Love? Trial By Fire even experiments with the rhythm some while teetering on the balance between heavy metal and metal ballad. So By this point I'm fine with another song sounding like something from the first half. The tunes take a little of a drop in rhythmic quality once they go back to the normality of the first half, but are still enjoyable.
Invincible Shield shows a noticeable improvement over Firepower and is a greater testament to what Judas Priest is capable of. Through denser metal atmospheres and instrumentation, as well as a willingness to push even further than Painkiller, Invincible Shield overcome the 80's nostalgic vibe that could be interpreted as "being done before," and stands as a modern classic.
Avenged Sevenfold - City of Evil
Genres: Heavy Metal
I'm glad I'm finally on this Avenged Sevenfold kick. I've put them off for years out of lack of interest for metalcore and alternative metal. I was extremely eager to see where the band's mutation would take them, putting their crappy debut on exactly the same level (and directly above on my list of all albums I've heard ranked from best to worst) as The Unspoken King by Cryptopsy, and having been fairly satisfied with the increase in melodic and emotional focus on the second. But now comes the monster of metal: City of Evil, one of the most controversially diverse albums in both genre-bending and online ratings.
The album kicks off with their iconic song, Beast and the Harlot. I heard this song a couple times years ago out of curiosity, but I wasn't inspired to go into the whole album yet despite liking it. But I had VERY little recollection of it, so the Judas Priest shift into thrashy power metal territory took me a little by surprise. One guy on RYM said it sounds like something you'd hear from the Sonic 2 soundtrack. Now I've played enough Sonic games to know what that means (not Sonic 2, though), but this is NOT Crush 40 here. I'd rather sing along with "Her plagues will come all at once as her mourners watch her burn" than "I can feel your every rage, step aside I'll turn the page." The difference here is THIS SONG IS NOT THROWN TOGETHER. Although, the shift between thrashy metal and Helloween melodies feels a little out of place sometimes, despite being a lot of fun.
That was just for the first song. Next is Burn It Down, which is more F-Zero-rooted than Sonic-rooted, and the thrash factor is pretty high. You can tell these guys are Metallica fans, but it feels more like influence than straight out copying. The melodic factor works beautifully with the singer's melodic vocals despite the high thrash factor. It looks like they finally found the balance between melody and energy that they struggled with on the debut and improved on with Waking the Fallen.
There's a metalcore drum kick that starts Blinded in Chains. Like a few songs from WtF (oh), it combines elements of melodic metalcore with power metal, but this was easily the best metalcore effort I had heard. There's obvious vocal overlapping in the production, but the experience it creates is purely badass and never lets go of the melodic touches. In fact, this song boasts some of their best melodies. The song also has an out-of-whack and creepy fade-out segment which lasts about a minute and a half, but does a great job with the dramatic flair without ever overdoing it. I guess this is another favorite AVS song of mine. But no matter how hard I tried, I didn't get the Samson reference I was expected because of that obvious title. Huh.
"He who makes a beast out of himself..."Here it comes, their potential magnum opus. Melodically their best song so far, does an excellent job shifting from energetic metal to slow ballady alt-rock like it's nothing, and does an excellent job bringing standard hardcore punk into the alt-metal world. On top of that, it's got an incredibly catchy guitar riff. Even if it's not a very extreme one, it's an empowering one. I've gotten aching arms and fingers doing air guitar to this. Probably the best thing that ever came out of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and the movie was already good.
Trashed and Scattered blasted me into the "powercore" of the last album, but it wasn't so jarring as the shift between ballads and almost-deathcore like on WtF. It felt so natural because the previous songs set a standard of diversity and aura that feels difficult to break. Once again we get some extremely catchy rhythms. Or maybe it's just me because I'm a power metal sucker, and I've been waiting for a band to really pull of the combination of metalcore and power metal. This is what I expect.
Next, Seize the Day... OK, maybe I should've expected this, but a piano-rooted alt-rock ballad threw me off. It didn't fuck with the vibe or anything, but it was a really pleasant surprise. There's an easy comparison many have made to GNR, which may detract from the originality of the song itself, but at least it's a totally different singer. Anyway, it's pretty cute and it's a welcome addition. I think the vocal melodies outshine the instrumentation, though.
Sidewinder is next. Here we have another energetic ballad that steers into some fairly progressive melodic territory. It hits all the right notes for a proper alchemic reaction, balancing the rhythms, moods and hard rock / heavy metal vibes. The song goes on with this surprisingly soothing energy for two-thirds of the song before kicking into a latin rock solo, never breaking the vibes. That's pretty smart of them. Not really overlong for seven minutes.
There's a welcome return to racecar metalcore and thrash metal with The Wicked End, featuring a wonkier lead riff with a little bit of djent attached. But the song slowly mutates overtime, playing with varying levels of energy before somehow naturally working its way into a slow, symphonic chorus during the middle section and helping to overlap the third act until it kicks back into the thrash. Is this the band's Stairway to Heaven? Or is it just lacking focus? No. No way it's lacking focus. It felt natural, and that's what makes it work. The entire first album was loaded with metalcore tropes that didn't work together, so I'm going to approve this song and anyone can fight me on that if they want. I'm a bit surprised this isn't the closer. Maybe the album would be fine if it ended here, but I was gonna give the other three tracks a go and finish the album anyway.
The perfect way to start a song after that ambitious monster is with a slow pairing of acoustic guitar and violins recreating the wild west. This is the beginning of Strength of the World. Alright, after everything I've heard, I'll give them a spaghetti western beginning. What does anyone have to lose? It's not fucking with the flow. After the minute-and-twenty-second intro, we get back into the electric guitars and build up into a thrash riff and goes into a fairly heavy and meaningful song that doesn't try very hard to go into more drama and relies on high-pitched guitars and the singer's voice to do all the work. Personally, I think for nine minutes this should've had more focus, but it's not bad. Besides, the song does mix it up again by bringing back the acoustic guitars and going into western ballad territory, and eventually into energetic riffs again and finally a cinematic violin outro. It's another ambitious track, but it doesn't really have the same oomph or balance as The Wicked End.
The second-to-last track is Betrayed, and I feel like this one's a little melodically challenged. The riffs and verses feel a little wonky and don't flow very well. It's obvious they were trying a little too hard with this song, and that it was basically filler for a seventy-minute album. Bad move, really.
This monolith ends with M.I.A. It begins how I expect, with a softer intro before forcing itself back into energetic territory. Thankfully, the band chose the right genre to go back to: metalcore, their roots. But this time, the melodies work and the unpredictability is balanced. I mean, the melodies aren't amazing, but they drive this eight minute song from beginning to end and never loses its grip.
Alright, I'm extremely happy to say that I've given their iconic third album a spin. And now to goad half the metal community into pointing their guns at me: I ate the majority of this album up. It may be overly ambitious, but it's good to see they were trying a bunch of new things, despite the fact that the overambition leads the album to be frontloaded, especially due to the shorter lengths in the first half. They seem to have largely forsaken metalcore, but they kept the personality traits and made something pretty fun. This album might not always have the best songs, but it fits all of my standards for a good album. The biggest reason I liked this album is that it handles genres and melodies exactly how I would if I were in a metal band (although I'd be heavier, and less reliant on epics). Overall, great album by a band finding their ground, even if they have some toning down to do.
92/100