Judas Priest Stained Class CD

Principally recorded at Chipping Norton Studios, Cotswold, England in 1978. Includes liner notes by Judas Priest.

Culled from performances on their mammoth 1986 TURBO tour, Judas Priest's second live album, PRIEST...LIVE! was issued one year later. Including some post-BRITISH STEEL songs, PRIEST...LIVE! doesn't quite measure up to their outstanding earlier live album, 1979's UNLEASHED IN THE EAST, but it has its moments.

Unsurprisingly, plenty of selections from the TURBO album are featured, such as "Out in the Cold," "Turbo Lover," and "Parental Guidance," but "Hot Rockin'," "Don't Go," and several '80s Priest classics are noticeably absent. Still, you can't go wrong with inspired versions of such favorites as "Love Bites," "Some Heads Are Gonna Roll," "Electric Eye," "Living After Midnight," and "You've Got Another Thing Coming."

After the stunning success of 1977's SIN AFTER SIN, Judas Priest offered another exceptional album with its follow-up one year later, STAINED CLASS. Though disco and punk were grabbing all the headlines in the late '70s, Priest turned a deaf ear to these new musical developments, and stuck to its heavy metal guns. Rarely has metal sounded so inspired and precise as this album's highlights, "Beyond the Realms of Death," "Better By You Better Than Me," and "Exciter." STAINED CLASS was Judas Priest's third classic release in a row.

An indisputable metal masterpiece, Stained Class is the apex of '70s Judas Priest, a sinister, muscular collection that ties the disparate strands of their style together while jacking the adrenaline rush up to previously undreamed-of levels. Even the lone slow-tempo track, "Beyond the Realms of Death," has an exciting, visceral intensity, and the whole band is at the absolute peak of its powers in terms of technical execution. Lyrically, Stained Class is probably the darkest moment in a career filled with them; the whole second half of the record is positively obsessed with death, although the ridiculous 1989-1990 court case alleging that the album provoked two Nevada teenagers' suicides was instead centered around the Gary Wright/Spooky Tooth cover "Better by You, Better Than Me," in which Rob Halford allegedly embedded the subliminal, backward-recorded message, "Do it." At any rate, the air of malevolence about Stained Class, and the sheer power of its jackhammer guitar riffs, was unrivaled in heavy metal upon its release (even in Priest's own catalog), stamping the album an instant classic and solidifying Judas Priest's status as arguably the most original and musical metal band of its time. More than any other Priest album, the style of Stained Class also laid the groundwork for the thrash and speed metal that would rise to dominance in the mid- to late '80s, making it a defining moment for the New Wave of British Heavy Metal movement and one of the genre's all-time landmarks. [The 2001 reissue offers two bonus tracks: the previously unreleased track "Fire Burns Below" and a live version of "Better by You, Better Than Me."] ~ Steve Huey

Digitally remastered by Jon Astley.

;2 Bonus Tracks,One Studio,One Live

All tracks have been digitally remastered.

Judas Priest: Rob Halford (vocals); Glen Tipton (guitar, background vocals); K.K. Downing (guitar); Ian Hill (bass); Les Binks (drums).

Producers: Dennis MacKay, James Guthrie, Judas Priest.

Engineers include: Neil Ross, Ken Thomas, Paul Northfield.

Personnel: Glenn Tipton (vocals, guitar); K.K. Downing (guitar); Ian Hill (bass guitar); Les Binks (drums).

Audio Remasterer: Jon Astley.

Recording information: Advision Studios, London, England (1978); Chipping Norton Studios (1978); Trident Studios, London, England (1978); Utopia Studios (1978).

Personnel: Rob Halford (vocals); Glenn Tipton, K.K. Downing (guitar); Ian Hill (bass); Dave Holland (drums).

Q (4/02, p.134) - 3 out of 5 stars - "...Reassuring evidence that the band hadn't lost their live presence..."