Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Judas Priest
Label: Columbia Records
Released: 1980
Length: 36:10
Rating: 4.5/5
Some might say the title of this record was picked on purpose because it sounds so familiar to British ears, but on the flip side, it totally earns it. It went off in Great Britain, and Judas Priest were right then driving their portrait as a band to its peak. I won’t say a creative peak, but all the factors and circumstances around the making and release of the album fell perfectly into place. “British Steel” embodies the actual high point of the metal scene for 1980. “British Steel” earned Judas Priest their immortal title of metal gods.
For this excellent album, Judas Priest managed to put together a handful of tracks that still happily turn up on plenty of commercial radio stations today. Hearing Living After Midnight or Breaking The Law on Val 202 is nothing out of the ordinary even now, though in a flood of rock imitators, hearing Judas Priest on the radio is always a nice surprise, one that still gives you hope that the skies will clear up for us Slovenes.
Style-wise, Judas Priest didn’t invent anything “earth-shatteringly” special, but “British Steel” as a whole is an album made with perfection, both in the compositions themselves and in how they’re played. This is a record that holds a special place in the heart of every sincere lover of electric guitars. The lyrical themes are still rebellion, rejecting everything that clergy and politicians, hand in hand, try to force on us, and a call to disobedience and a general all-metal uprising, which fit perfectly with the eruption of the N.W.O.B.H.M. in that same year.
“British Steel” holds neutron bombs like Living After Midnight, Breaking The Law, Rapid Fire, Grinder and Steeler. Then there’s the magnificent Metal Gods, with just two dead simple riffs locked into the chords D and E and E and F#, a song with which Judas Priest built themselves a monument and which rounds off the band’s portrait and their faith in heavy metal in the best possible way. The Rage shows off the art of combining an aggressive stance with romantic sophistication, something the band has always expressed so convincingly throughout its career. The same goes for You Don’t Have To Be Old To Be Wise. Those two tracks hold most of the record’s melody and epic feel, although “British Steel” in general has no stretched-out, epically pompous melodic tricks. Everything is cut clean and straight to the point, without a shred of overcomplication, the songs sharp as razors, the approach of all the guys downright fanatical. United is the track through which the band delivers its faith to the masses in the most direct way. Together we’ll take justice into our own hands and seize the throne (“United we never shall fall!”). Judas Priest always loved writing call-to-revolution songs like this, such as Take On The World, or the ones from the eighties: Rock You All Around The World, Heavy Duty/Defenders Of The Faith, or Monsters Of Rock.
How important Judas Priest are to heavy metal is also proven by how many bands took their names from the band’s song titles. Examples: Sinner, Running Wild, Steeler, Rage and Exciter.
Judas Priest left the guitar solos out of Breaking The Law, while the solo in Living After Midnight is so stripped down you almost miss it. The band’s aim was to keep as much raw punch in the songs as possible. Expressive, short, to-the-point riffs reign across the whole record and make for a proper little school of songwriting, the kind that gets your blood boiling the moment you listen. The rhythms are tailored to the same end, simplified to the max. For the album “Britsh Steel”, Judas Priest took on a new drummer, Dave Holland, and the lineup stayed stable with him for the next decade. Dave brought exactly what Judas Priest needed: a bigger dose of explosive drumming. After Les Binks left the band, the drum fills never again sounded so sophisticated and refined, but Judas Priest now needed destructive power in the music, and Dave was the right answer. The producer’s chair was also taken over by a new man, Tom Allom. He stayed with the band, just like Dave, all the way up to the album “Painkiller” (1990).
This remastered version will throw plenty of people when they pop it into the CD player. It starts with Rapid Fire. Breaking The Law, which opens the original release, sits third on the current remaster, after Metal Gods. From a psychoanalytic point of view, the start of a record is practically the most important part for the average listener, since that’s when concentration on what a given record has to offer is at its highest. By my own presumption, Breaking The Law was put at the start of the album in 1980 on purpose, for commercial reasons. With the current remaster opening with Rapid Fire, the band’s wish (again, my personal opinion) has finally been granted, since they probably wanted to pick Rapid Fire as the opening track on the record 21 years ago already. The reissue has two bonus tracks. The first matches the album’s title very well, though not its style. That’s the song Red, White & Blue. It’s the band’s “personal” anthem to the homeland (the title refers to the colors of the Great Britain flag). Of course this ceremonial chant has no business on any Judas Priest album, but it’s a very interesting thing that came from the band’s pen. The other bonus is a “live” version of Grinder from the British Steel tour, on which, through March 1980, Judas Priest were joined as the support act by the hot new wave upstarts Iron Maiden. But that’s a whole other story.
“British Steel” is the album that immortalized the name Judas Priest. Even today it’s one of the most important albums in the history of heavy metal rock. Overall, through the second half of the seventies Judas Priest lit the lamp and opened up space for the new wave bands on British soil, while the German heavy metal scene, very lively but dosed with a smaller measure of media pomp, was also growing, and Judas Priest left an indelible mark on that one too. In 1980 the earth shook, heavy metal landed in the focus of the masses, and Judas Priest, with “British Steel”, as a reward for the thorny path they had walked, deservedly took the metal throne, because that year was entirely theirs.
Lineup
Rob Halford – vocals
K.K. DOwning – guitar
Glenn Tipton – guitar
Ian Hill – bass guitar
Dave Holland – drums
Production
Tom Allom
Track list
1. Rapid Fire
2. Metal Gods
3. Breaking The Law
4. Grinder
5. United
6. Don’t Have to Be Old to Be Wise
7. Living After Midnight
8. The Rage
9. Steeler
BONUS TRACKS ON THE 2001 REMASTERED EDITION:
10. Red, White & Blue
11. Grinder (live)
Album length: 44:36
