"A blistering, molten metal masterpiece": Judas Priest revive themselves on Painkiller before Rob Halford's decade-long hiatus

The end of Rob Halford’s first period as Judas Priest frontman arrived shortly after the release of one of their greatest albums. Painkiller rips from start to finish and single-handedly redefined the sound of traditional heavy metal in the process. There are literally hundreds of bands out there peddling this exact same sound, but no one will ever top the original. And that title track… holy fucking shit.

Nearly 30 years on, Painkiller (the song) remains an electrifying experience, crammed with white-knuckle twists and turns, vigorous shifting tempos and haywire energy; everyone will have their favourite bit, but there’s something so scintillating about the way the action pauses to cue the sweep-picked arpeggio into Glenn Tipton’s magnificent solo – reputedly the guitarist’s personal favourite.

The album also marked a musical redemption after the disappointingly hit-and-miss Ram It Down. However, despite earning Rob Halford and his fellow Metal Gods a Grammy nomination, Painkiller actually charted lower than Ram….

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Other albums released in September 1990

• And the Horse They Rode in On - Soul Asylum
• Empire - Queensrÿche
• Two Fires - Jimmy Barnes
• Ragged Glory - Neil Young and Crazy Horse
• Cherry Pie - Warrant
• Under the Red Sky - Bob Dylan
• Rust In Peace - Megadeth
• The Wall Live in Berlin - Roger Waters
• In a Priest Driven Ambulance - The Flaming Lips
• Cause of Death - Obituary
• Lawn Boy - Phish
• The Razors Edge - AC/DC
• All Shook Down - The Replacements
• Dear 23 - The Posies
• Superchunk - Superchunk
• Third Eye - Redd Kross
• The Last Temptation of Reid - Lard

What they said...

"Painkiller secured Judas Priest's legacy with the next generation of metal fans; it's the point where their contributions make the most sense to modern ears more attuned to metal extremes (and more affectionate towards lyrical clichés). It isn't the most important of the Priest classics, but it is the fastest, the meanest, and, well, the most f***ing metal album they ever released." (AllMusic)

"In 1979 they sounded like Bad News with production values, endless empty jerk-offs about leather and steel and war. They haven't changed in the slightest. This is how to get rich in Middle America. They might get away with being merely tedious if it were not for Rob Halford's excruciating voice – it's, y'know, that high-pitched scream that you just automatically associate with really bad heavy metal." (NME)

"We are used to Judas Priest’s silly lyrics about beasts and evil and evil beasts and leather and weapons and more. It comes with the territory. But the band attacks with abandon on up-tempo songs like Leather Rebel and Metal Meltdown. Arena-friendly anthems are still here, but take a back seat to the speed and heft. Halford relies more on his shrieking head range than his S&M range, giving the entire album a very malevolent feel." (Angry Metal Guy)

What you said...

Andrew Cumming: After the disappointment of Turbo and Ram It Down, Painkiller arrived like a juggernaut. Just those opening drums were enough to quicken the pulse. Listening to the whole track leaves the listener feeling steamrolled. It sounds as good today as it did back then.

All the above applies to the whole album. It never lets up. It’s one of the most intense metal albums, certainly of those released up to that point. And it still sounds fantastic today - as the songs did when a whole number made it into the Priest setlist this year.

A Touch Of Evil adds a touch of classy variety. And One Shot Of Glory is a fitting and powerful send-off. All in all, a super strong album that still stands up well. And it would have set them up well for the 90s, a tough decade for almost every 80s metal band. This makes the subsequent events that followed, with Halford leaving the band, as bewildering and frustrating now as they were then.

Gary Claydon: Priest have always been pretty high on my list of favourites, but that mostly stems from their '70s output, up to and including the seminal 'live' album Unleashed In The East. They stuttered their way through the '80s, a mix of brilliant and banal as they increasingly turned their gaze Stateside.

Painkiller was a welcome bruiser of an album after the lacklustre pair of Turbo and Ram It Down. With their sound given a (double) kick up the backside by Scott Travis, Priest proved they could mix it with any of their metal contemporaries. The title track is a bona fide metal classic, no argument. The atmospheric pair of Touch of Evil and Night Crawler are further highlights.

While there isn't a truly duff track here, Painkiller isn't perfect. Halford's vocals are too strained at times, and on the whole, there is a slight lack of the subtlety that made '70s Priest so compelling, not always helped by Travis's constant barrage, as good as he is. They're minor quibbles though. I'm a sucker for a twin guitar attack and they don't come much better than Tipton and Downing. A quick nod of the head to Chris Tsangarides' production is warranted here.

Halford certainly picked a good album with which to demonstrate the old showbiz adage of " always leave 'em wanting more' prior to his 11-year hiatus, 'cos Painkiller does exactly that.

Brian Carr: As I revisited Judas Priest’s Painkiller for the first time in many years, one of the things that struck me was how much an influential band can be influenced by the musical scene of the time.

Judas Priest, one of the seemingly few mainstream bands that embraced the “heavy metal” label, epitomised the driving, two-guitar attack that so many have done well. The mid-to-late 80s brought the rise of MTV and melodic metal in the mainstream, and Priest bought in, adding guitar synths and - gasp! - colour into their leather!

It seemed to work at the time as Turbo was their third consecutive top 20 album in the US and had the band all over MTV, but hardcore fans weren’t as sold. The follow-up, 1988’s Ram It Down, disappointed in comparison, despite a heavier sound. (Apparently, the band wanted to release Turbo and Ram It Down as a double album, but the label wasn’t in favour.)

This brings us to 1990, the arrival of new blood in drummer Scott Travis and a sound that seems greatly influenced by classic 1980s thrash on Painkiller. Painkiller, All Guns Blazing and Metal Meltdown are ferocious burners; Hell Patrol, Leather Rebel and Night Crawler only let up on the throttle slightly. A Touch of Evil proves the band didn’t chuck the guitar synths out the window, but to this metal fan’s ear, that isn’t a bad thing - I like that tune considerably more than Turbo Lover.

Overall, Painkiller is an album that has sat on my CD shelf for an extensive period of time that it shouldn’t have, because it's an absolute beast. Can I blame it on my age?

Greg Schwepe: Judas Priest are one of those bands I like, but for the most part have this “Yeah, just make me rock, bang my head, play a little air guitar (or real guitar!), and give a little fist pump” attitude about them.

But, in listening to Painkiller, it seemed that maybe there was one thing I did maybe give a rat’s butt about. Rob Halford’s screaming Metal God voice? Check. Yes. Yes. The twin guitar attack of K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton? Yes. Double kick drums after drinking two Red Bulls? No. No, and no.

If the songs on Painkiller didn’t have the real crazy kick drum stuff, I liked it. If it did, I didn’t like it. My innate “drum sense” just kicks in (no pun intended, I swear) and… nope.

Let me stick to the earlier Judas Priest stuff, and I’d be happy. Heck, give me just Unleashed In The East and I’d be happy. 6 out of 10 on this one for me. Too much “thumpety, thump, thump x 10.”

Judas Priest - Painkiller - YouTube

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John Davidson: I lost interest in Judas Priest after Unleashed In The East (a great summing up of their 70s output whether it was live or not), and so I missed their transformation from old school classic rock to full-blown metal. To me, they were always in the shadow of bands like Black Sabbath, Rainbow and Rush, but they have somehow outlasted them all.

1990's Painkiller sees them going full on thrash with opener PainKiller. What follows is a series of jabs to the eardrums. Short, sharp, double kick drum-driven metal music designed to pulverise the brain.

Side two opens with the slightly less frantic but still upbeat duo of Night Crawler and Between The Hammer & The Anvil. It's not until A Touch of Evil that they revert to 'more familiar (to me) melodic heavy rock. It's a great track and represents the style of Priest song I generally prefer.

Halford pushes his voice to the limits on One Shot At Glory, but otherwise it's a bit more pedestrian, having neither the frenetic power nor the groove of the earlier tracks. Living Bad Dreams is the sort of heavy, slightly plodding closer that reminds me why Priest were never my favourite band.

Overall, though, it's a very good record from a band with twelve studio albums under their belts, and it has a freshness that belies a career entering its third decade of musical tastes. 8/10.

Philip Qvist: For some reason, I have never really got into the music of Judas Priest, and I have been a confirmed Metalhead since the early '80s. Don't ask me why, because even I cannot fathom it out. I just put it down to being one of those things.

And yet I am very familiar with a lot of their songs, including Painkiller and A Touch of Evil, and I do agree that British Steel is a masterpiece. Even more bizarre is that I have yet to hear a Judas Priest song and then say something on the lines of "wow, I don't actually like this one".

So, I guess it would come as no surprise to anyone to read that this is the first time that I have heard Painkiller in full, and I guess it will come as even less of a surprise to hear that I actually like it. I cannot fault the vocals of the soon-to-be-departing Rob Halford, who is on top form. The guitar playing of both KK Downing & Glenn Tipton is also top-notch, while new drummer Scott Travis fitted in quite nicely here. There seems to be some debate on whether bassist Ian Hill played on Painkiller or not, with keyboard player for hire Don Airey claiming that most of the bass parts came from his Minimoog.

The best songs for me were the aforementioned Painkiller and A Touch Of Evil, along with Leather Rebel and the near seven-minute closer, One Shot At Glory. All in all, this is a damn fine album, packed with great songs performed by musicians at their peak; I can see why this album is rated so highly by virtually everybody except NME (but of course). I really need to give Judas Priest a lot more love. Not quite a 10 from me, but pretty close to it.

Stuart Jennings: One of the top five metal albums ever. Not a bad track.

Mike Canoe: Given that Rob Halford left the band soon after, Painkiller was less of a resurrection (that would come later) than the singer going out on a high note, pun acknowledged but not intended.

After two albums of chasing hair metal money, it's as if Judas Priest remembered that they were one of the greatest heavy metal bands of all time and went all in on neck-wrecking, horn-throwing metal. A lot of the credit goes to double kick drum dynamo Scott Travis, who reinvigorated the rest of the band like an emergency room defibrillator. Kudos also to producer Chris Tsangarides, who put all that extra speed and energy to excellent use. Halford, in particular, sounds incredible, howling and screaming like that awful Johnny B. Goode cover never happened.

My favourites really depend on what song I'm listening to at the time, but my consistent top three are probably the title track, Between The Hammer & The Anvil, and the jaw-droppingly awesome fright fest, Night Crawler. I need to make sure I'm not around sharp objects or in a motor vehicle when that one's on because the limb-flailing can get pretty intense.

Based on his memoirs, Halford seems to look back on his time away from Priest as a mistake, but experimenting with other bands and sounds seems like a good way to have gotten through the metal-hating nineties. I love the first Fight album, War of Words, even more than Painkiller, and even the uneven Voyeurs, by Halford's industrial experiment 2wo, is worth checking out.

Judas Priest - A Touch of Evil - YouTube

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Adam McCann: A stone-cold classic. One of the best metal albums ever written.

Thomas Christiansen: The greatest heavy metal album ever! Truly an all killer, no-filler album. I mean, what is the weakest track on this? Between The Hammer & The Anvil? Nah. Metal Meltdown? No way! All Guns Blazing? Are you kidding me?! Battle Hymns/One Shot of Glory is criminally underrated! I just can't pick any!

I do know Painkiller, Night Crawler and the amazing A Touch of Evil are my top picks - always have been! And Hell Patrol and Leather Rebel might just make my top five. Amazing album!

Gordon Johnston: Great production. It doesn't half blast out of the speakers!

Chris Elliott: You have to admire Priest's ability to change with the times. British Steel and Unleashed In The East were a major part of the teenage soundtrack I maintained a vague fondness for through the '80s. I still don't like this album, but that's more a reflection of my tastes than anything else.

Mark Herrington: Painkiller is a blistering, molten metal masterpiece that I never tire of. Rob Halford sums it up best for me when he roars, “Here comes the metal meltdown / Run for your lives”

It’s all killer and no filler, with every song a storming classic. Halford is at his very best, with fantastic lyrical imagery married to awesome drums and endless guitar pyrotechnics.

I remember playing it constantly when it was first released in 1990 , during an era of shifting musical tectonic plates. At that time, it was both reassuringly and musically brilliant, whilst also embracing metal evolution.

My favourite tracks are Painkiller, the brooding A Touch of Evil, the sinister Night Crawler – like Killer on the Loose on steroids – and Battle Hymn/ One Shot at Glory. In reality, on their day, any of the songs could feature, such is the quality. An easy 10/10 for me.

Nigel Mawdsley: Painkiller is a superb album from start to finish. A lot of music critics – and some Judas Priest fans – hailed it as a return to form following the band's previous two studio releases, Turbo in 1986 and Ram It Down in 1988. I think the 'return to form' statements were a little unfair, as both Turbo and Ram It Down were great albums. Painkiller was just different to those.

From the opening salvo of the title track, the album just doesn't let up. Production, songwriting, musicianship, it's all a 10 out of 10!

It's such a shame that misunderstanding and other factors meant that Painkiller wasn't followed up due to Rob Halford's departure from the band for 11 years. With Halford gone, the Judas Priest albums Jugulator and Demolition had something missing. The spirit was willing, but the melody had gone.

Painkiller, as previously stated, gets a thoroughly deserved perfect 10!

Final score: 8.42 (84 votes cast, total score 708)

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