Judas Priest – The Essential Judas Priest

artist website

publisher

impulse buy

Sony Music
Produced by Chris Tsangarides/James Guthrie/Tom Allom/Roger Glover

When labels do these series of compilations from the albums they happen to own by their biggest bands they normally turn out to be cheap rehashes that nowhere near cover the best of the band’s output. Sony’s The Essential… series has been different.

Sony have the benefit of having held on to many of their biggest names for near enough their entire careers, making their double CD compilations of the likes of Alice In Chains, Bruce Springsteen, Ozzy Osbourne and properly comprehensive. They even managed to pull off the master stroke of licensing Iron Maiden material from EMI and producing the most complete best of collection for them as well. The new one for British legends Judas Priest is no different.

Obviously this doesn’t include absolutely everything. It focuses exclusively on the years that Rob Halford fronted the band, mostly because these are considered the best (some would disagree), but also because for the years Tim “Ripper” Owens was their singer they were signed to SPV, returning to Sony when Rob Halford returned in 2004. Therefore you get near enough all of the obligatory anthems, including Breaking The Law, Metal Gods, Screaming For Vengeance, Painkiller, Beyond The Realms of Death, Hell Bent For Leather and Electric Eye, plus sometimes overlooked essentials like Blood Red Skies, Night Crawler and A Touch of Evil.

The proportions of songs from the respective albums seems to be about as accurate as it should be, but the occasional track selection seems a little odd, but does serve to make the overall selection suitably different to the existing Metal Works set. Given that both albums focus on the Rob Halford eras of Priest, the only additional material this release has at its disposal which the 1993 release didn’t is new album Angel of Retribution, from which two tracks are included here. And therefore, to make it different to the previous release, the only option is to choose different songs. Unfortunately, the selection of songs on Metal Works was so good, the different songs chosen here can generally only be worse.

For example, four tracks from the excellent Painkiller album (the first with Scott Travis’ amazing drum work) is good, but Metal Meltdown, included on Metal Works, is a far superior song to Hell Patrol, included here. Similarly Desert Plains from Point of Entry should be in ahead of Hot Rockin’, and Night Comes Down from Defenders of The Faith instead of Love Bites. Elsewhere, Stained Class (not included on either compilation), from the album of the same name, is far more worthy than Out In The Cold from Turbo.

So if all these shouldn’t be there, what does this album have above the old one? Well, the two new songs, Judas Rising and Revolution, obviously. Of the older stuff, getting the original studio version of Victim of Changes licensed from their first label, Gull Records, is a definite bonus. Then United, The Ripper, The Green Manalishi (With The Two Pronged Crown), Jawbreaker and The Sentinel are all good inclusions. Genocide and Tyrant are still missing, and Gull seem reluctant to ever license those ones out. Sony could have still used live versions, but they seem to have adopted a no-live-tracks policy with their thus far excellent Essential… series.

It doesn’t really get any better than this. You’ve got nearly two and a half hours of pure heavy metal here, and not many do it better than Priest. If you don’t have any Priest, this or Metal Works are the albums to start with. As for which is better, they both have great tracks the other doesn’t have. So whichever is cheapest in your favourite record store is probably the best choice. Both are five-star collections.

“ doesn’t really get any better than this ”

Tracklist:
CD 1 – Judas Rising / Breaking The Law / Hell Bent For Leather / Diamonds And Rust / Victim of Changes / Loves Bites / Heading Out To The Highway / Ram It Down / Beyond The Realms of Death / You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’ / Jawbreaker / A Touch of Evil / Delivering The Goods / United / Turbo Lover / Painkiller / Metal Gods

CD 2 – The Hellion / Electric Eye / Living After Midnight / Freewheel Burning / Exciter / The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown) / Blood Red Skies / Night Crawler / Sinner / Hot Rockin’ / The Sentinel / Before The Dawn / Hell Patrol / The Ripper / Screaming For Vengeance / Out In The Cold / Revolution

Limited Edition CD 3 – Dissident Aggressor / Better By You Better Than Me / Grinder / Desert Plains / Riding On The Wind / Rock Hard Ride Free / All Guns Blazing

Written by Andy Lye
More: Compilation Albums, Heavy Metal, Judas Priest