Unpopular opinion but I think Before the dawn was the best song on Hell Bent for leather. KK's solo on Before the dawn was so beautiful that it always gives me goosebumps.
@@shredhed572 Sabbath created the genre, but were still very much rooted in blues. By the time of Killing Machine, Priest had pretty much gotten rid of the blues in their music and had made metal, well, metal. It had become a distinct genre thanks to them.
The most import thing about Killing Machine (Hell Bent for Leather) is the fact that its tour spawned an epic live album. Unleashed In The East converted more Judas Priest fans than all others combined.
That's accurate. Priest were the best metal band on the planet at that time. HBFL and UITE confirmed that. ULINE Should have been a double album. Even with the EP they left off songs like Dissident Agrressor
Unleashed In The Studio. Always feel cheated listening to that album coz Rob re did his vocals in the studio. Whether he had a cold at the time or it was a bad recording is disputed.
Killing Machine (Hell Bent for Leather) was the very first Judas Priest album I had ever bought back in 1978. I had been looking for a new metal album and had never heard of Judas Priest before (I know...shocking!). As soon as I saw the album cover I KNEW that I had to have it. I had no idea if it was good or bad, but that cover blew me away. Thank God it was an amazing album and it started me on the path to becoming a life long Judas Priest fan!
Before Screaming for Vengeance, I always viewed this album as the definitive heavy metal album. I still view it as THE definitive turning point in Judas Priest history. I see British Steel as the follow-up act. I think it is remarkable how little Halford takes his voice up high on this -- he shows he is capable of kicking butt in any vocal range. Best song: Burnin' Up. I own the US vinyl -- have since 1980.
Killing Machine always came across as a concept album to me. From the cover to the content & themes, it feels like it's all from the perspective of a cold blooded, contract killer. A sort of "American Psycho" for the working class. I remember sitting in my bed when I was 13 and listening to this whole album over and over and just staring at the picture on the LP. This album is from another world.
Yes! It feels like a character concept throughout most of the songs. Like, the character in Killing Machine, is the same as in Hell Bent for Leather and Running Wild.
I was only 10yrs old when KILLING MACHINE was released. However, it was called HELL BENT FOR LEATHER. I'm from a small village called Shungopavi in Second Mesa Arizona the Hopi reservation. There's nothing out here but I was already listening to classic rock and later hard rock. When I first heard this album, it blew me away and I just had to become a musician. My most favorite song is EVENING ⭐ STAR, ...WHY? Because it reminds me of my brothers who aren't with us anymore and every time I look into the night sky, I just know their stars are SHINING DOWN ON ME. Went to see JUDAS PRIEST in concert during their DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH tour in Phoenix Arizona at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum. TURBO tour at the Firebird Lake in Arizona. One of the most excellent shows I've ever seen. 🤘👉METAL GODS👈🤘 MAY THE GREAT SPIRIT BE WITH YOU ALL ALWAYS MY BROTHERS
"Hellbent for Leather" is most definitely my favorite Judas Priest album. It's all killer, no filler. It is unapologetically metal, yet it embraced the street-level grit of punk, so it's easy to see how this album helped to light the fuse for the NWOBHM.
My first album I bought with my own money, in 1980, I was 12 or 13 at the time. When I listened to it with headphones at the record shop (remember that there were record shops and that you could test listen to albums?) I was totally blown away right from the intro of Delivering the Goods... I don't really remember why I picked this album to listen to, but it sure was a defining moment for me. It is still one of my all time favourites, not only by Priest, but by any band!
Yeah, the tapping thing on Hell Bent for Leather, He started tapping later, not during and after recording. I know this. I saw him play it live without tapping. I took note later on when he started tapping. Don't forget VH78 had just came out in Feb of that year. He probably didn't even know who EVH was. Lol. And Glenn was also already using HB pups on his black strat , so Ed wasn't the first guy to do this. Ah, reminiscing the Golden age of Heavy Metal. After sabbath but before NWOBHM. On that note, when the new wave hit in the early 80s it actually was a good thing for Priest. It made them up their game even higher than it already was , with SFV. The mixing on that album WOW My band was over the day I got it We all heard it at the same time. On Electric Eye, when that E5 started riffin we ALL just went WHOA!! The tone of that album is devastating The HBFL album I always thought sounded like their earlier stuff - the way it was mixed I'm pretty sure on stained class Glenn used a rangemaster(treble booster), but I don't hear it on HBFL album. Btw Deliverin the Goods has my fave solo from Glenn on this album. His technical skill with the Pentatonic scale is mind blowing, although the song HBFL is arguably in my top 5 best songs. HBFL Grinder Metal Gods Electric Eye Turbo But that's just my list. What are you alls top 5?
When Hell Bent for Leather came out I was 16 and already had Sin After Sin, Sad Wings and Stained Class. I remember loving it yet obviously noticing the pop overtones(chorus of Evening Star and Take on the World). Stained Class was the heaviest music at the time and imo their best album ever so as much as I love and appreciate Hell Bent it was in a sense a disappointment as I wanted them to get even heavier vs getting more polished and commercial. I got see them live on that tour in Chicago at the Intl Amphiteatre May of '79 opening for UFO. Fantastic show, I got up pretty close and took some great shots with a 35mm camera and yes, Les Binks was playing drums!!!!. That tour obviously gave us Unleashed in the East! Delivering the Goods, Rock Forever, Hell bent, Burnin' Up, Running Wild, Killing Machine are some awesome, classic Priest tracks
Thanks MP, great work on one of my favorite Judas Priest LPs. Know wonder Rob HALFORD is happy to come on your channel and be interviewed. In 1979 I was lamenting the fact to an acquaintance that I couldn't find the a heavy enough sound in the hard rock bands of the time. He said have you heard of Judas Priest. I replied (typically) "Who's he?" He then put on 'Burning Up' from 'Killing Machine'. That was it.... I went out the next day and ordered 'Killing Machine'. I then ordered an LP each pay day until I had all of JP's LPs available at that time. My favorite JP period is from 'Stained Glass' to 'Point of Entry'. Still a big priest fan....Always grateful to that guy for putting on 'Burning Up'.
I think what makes judas priest so special is how the have their sound and they had to experiment in a sense as they were pushing the boundaries of what Heavy metal was and back then could be.
It was also their first album with a strong production and a genuine distorted heavy metal guitar tone (the guitar tone on their previous albums was significantly cleaner and less distorted).
never knew it was originally named Killing Machine. Hell Bent For Leather is a special album for me and hopefully also everyone within one hundred yards of my pickup when im listening to it (CD).
Rob voice started to mature here , More full , more darker and tougher tone is his voice than the more juvenile flamboyant operatic bits of the previous records .
When you mentioned about British bands wanting to make it big in America, that would have been a good time to insert a bit of the video for "Hello America" by Def Leppard. And yes, a video about Metal fashions could be interesting.
As a young Priesthead, this one, British Steel, and Sad Wings of Destiny were my favorites. The entire Priest discography up to Screaming for Vengeance provided background music for my D&D games (1979-1984) but Sad Wings, Rocka Rolla, and Hell Bent for Leather were the Priest albums I listened to while painting miniatures or designing dungeons.
This album and its songs influenced the whole hard rock/metal genre. James Guthrie did an outstanding job here. Imho it was the very first "metal" sounding album despite its nearly rap and rocky elements. The sound here is huge and meaty and exactly here we can talk about the sound we were familiar with in the golden 80's. With a pinch of exaggeration we can say back in the 70's you could hear literally every note a bass player hit but it was definitely not that case in the 80's. It was such a huge progress the whole sound recording process made in comparison to Stained Class back in the 1978 and for me this one sounds still fresh and relevant like it did back in 1978 in Europe (1979 in US for that matter). Its unbelievable both albums were released within one year and their sound is so different. And the album cover art? My fav song is probably Take on the World. Its cover art is a pure evil art. Love it
Arguably, the first LP Priest released that America REALLY grasped onto. It set the stage for Screaming for Vengeance to punch us all in the face. Fav cut? "Delivering the Goods" for me...
KM and Stained Class are on my top 10 list with the best music albums ever released. It is awesome that finally someone finally extensively mentioned those. Burning up is my favorite track I think. Rock for ever has one of the coolest riffs ever written.
I was 16 when British Steel came out and at the time I was a big hard rock fan. Hard rock like Ted Nugent, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Rainbow, Rush, etc but there always seemed to be something I hadn’t discovered yet. I loved Nugent because of the aggression. Then I heard Rapid Fire. It changed my life. Skipping school one day over at my friend Angelo’s house I started to delve into his record collection. And there is Stained Class. We were new acquaintances but I asked him to borrow it and when I first heard Exciter. I couldn’t believe my ears. At that point those few months introduced me to the music I still love today. I started to listen to metal night and WNHU radio on Saturday nights and discovered not only more JP but Iron maiden as well. One of the first songs my new band learned was Breaking The Law. Despite having a singer who was more in the Jim Morrison style we tackled Green Manalishi and Running Wild from HBFL. That album was pivotal in all our lives as it was easily listenable and playable as a band. I prefer all of those studio versions to the live stuff. Never really liked Unleashed in the East. Stained Class is still my favorite though.
Killing Machine trully marked a departure form the more extended songs of previous albums, cutting all the "fat" and making shorter, more punchy songs with much more attitude wich embraced the new look of leather of the Band. It Also marked a period of the band where they jumped to a more mainstream band wich was perfected with British Steel and later backfired with a way too mainstream album, Point of Entry. However, in 1978 Priest really made a difference and made the NWOBHM changue their curse and head for a new direction, talk about influence. Was also the first album where Ian embraced the more straight forward place in the band he had with his bass. I´d said other than Hell Bent for Leather, Delivering the goods is another great song, with Rock Forever and Take on the world.
My favorite thing to do lately is when I’m jamming on guitar, I put on unleashed in the east and I listen to hell bent for leather and star breaker back to back and feel like I’m really there with priest in Japan. That live album is def one of the best ever
"I've been whipped by Rob Halford" LOL Just the latest in a long series of clues/jokes that only people who were "in the know" would get, before he finally uncloseted himself years later.
The album is listed as Killing Machine world wide. Only in the US was it changed to "Hell Bent For Leather' because of the Cleveland Elementary School Shootings in San Diego in Jan 79. Such is their hysteria over gun crime. The Boomtown Rats' I Don't Like Mondays was a reference to this incident which left a school principal and a custodian dead. Brenda Spencer who was 16 at the time got life and is still incarcerated to this day age 59.
Love all 70s Priest albums. It was one classic after another. To pick just one favorite from Hell Bent For Leather is tough. Have to go with Running Wild. Such a quick burst of aggression. Love it. And the version on Unleashed in the East is phenomenal. All hail the Priest!!!!!
It's great how this album (and Screaming for vengeance) are the albums that sound like what you'd expect Judas Priest to sound like while all the other albums also sound like Judas Priest. This album just sounds like it has been written and recorded while wearing the tightest leather pants they could find in their closet \m/
I couldn't agree more. the first half of the 80s and also Painkiller were very solid, but 70s era Priest was their pinnacle and SC and KM are their best albums 🤘
I found this record along with some Kiss, Alice C. etc. at my Dad's who i visited every weekend as a young kid. This has been my favorite Priest ever since. Such precision, such groove.. this video does a great job breaking down the reasons why its a classic, manythnx 🤘
Omg you are so right about tapping. The first time I saw tapping was electric eye live in 1981. It’s totally possible that two people did then same things independently of each other at the same time. You are the first one to ever acknowledge this
There is no easy way to answer this, it changes often. The songs are really versatile, and instead of going in these, sometimes elaborate journeys within one song, they streamlined and went with one theme per song, and embraced a more traditional song structure as well, but you know this and pointed to them yourself. I think it was a ballsy move, and everything on this album, in retrospect, was firing on all cylinders!
As much as I loved British Steel and the following albums, I have always regretted the loss of pre-British Steel Priest. I just found it to be far more creative, expansive, without boundaries. Regardless, one of the greatest bands ever.
Ah, now as far as the Judas Priest "signature sound" is concerned, I thought "Stained Class" was the defining moment. But "Killing Machine" introduced an important element: motorcycles, and motorcycle uniforms, with plenty of metal-studded leather. This wrote the rules of "how to look like a Heavy Metal band" for a loooong time.
My favorite songs from this album are Running Wild and Green Manalishi (the first Judas Priest album I ever bought was Unleashed In The East and it had both of those songs on it. Green Manalishi was also the first Priest song I ever heard, even though I later found out it was a cover), but I also really dig Rock Forever and Burning Up because they're fairly obscure songs that have a different feel from most Priest songs. They're more uptempo bluesy hard rock than metal.
Ok you’ve acknowledged the greatness of Unleashed in the East-so we can look forward to an episode about it, right? You’re not going to skip it because it’s not a studio album, are you?
I love your content Metal Pilgrim. I sit here in a beautiful place on Vancouver Island. I can't begin to imagine what you, your beautiful country and people are going through. My thoughts and strong spirits to you my metal brothers and sisters 🌺
I saw The Priest in concert for the 1st time on that tour.They played my hometown of Santa Cruz California @ the civic auditorium,sold out show of 3000 headbangers.Went on to see them dozens of times over the years,my favorite band.
I know it as Hell Bent for Leather growing up in NYC in the mid 80s. Didn't even know the album's original name is Killing Machine until decades later.
@2:30 - 🤘🏼🤘🏼 *I know it hardly matters; but, there are videos right here on RU-vid of Ace Frehley (Kiss) & Neil Schon (Journey) doing the trilling/tapping technique years before Eddie VanHalen. (not to take anything away from Eddie's contribution) Cheers!* 🤘🏼🤘🏼
Speaking as someone who was around at the time: The "eyes of the world" were not concentrating on punk. Punk rock got a lot of press - most of it bad - but punk records didn't sell for shit, and so record labels began dropping punk artists almost as quickly as they picked them up. Aside from Tom Snyder's Tomorrow show and a handful of punk guests on Saturday Night Live, it wasn't until MTV began promoting the "punk-lite" image and sound of New Wave in the early 80s that punk rock was anything other than a niche phenomenon embraced by critics, dismissed by labels, abhorred by moral crusaders, persecuted by police, and (outside of a handful of hot spots like London and L.A.) near-completely ignored by the record-buying public. The stuff that dominated mainstream music culture in the late 70s was disco, alongside the fist-pumping arena rock of artists like Bob Segar, Boston, Meat Loaf, and Queen.
More pop. I love their even early stuff. Love their super early. Cant stand painkiller type stuff. Ram it down on was nothing but msn that super early stuff is amazing
Well, I'm gonna aim the crunch where it's bound to do most damage to your head and say... Killing Machine is my favorite song on the first Priest album I had. After i also got Unleashed In The East, I also picked up Stained Class, Sad Wings, Rocks Rolla and Sin After Sin in that order... And wore the grooves out.
Please do make a metalhead fashion video! I would absolutely love to see you explain it. Its been ages since anybody who knew what they were talking about did one
great vid! and um, to answer the poll, favorite song off it would be Green Manalishi - but if it has to be from Killing Machine, then its Hell Bent for Leather, duh
I got Killing Machine in the early 80s. At that time bands like Metallica were making a huge impression so to me Killing Machine sounded too tame. I think that may be an unfair comparison but I was really blown away by Metallica (esp Ride the Lightning). My favourite song on Killing Machine was Burning Up. Looking at it now I think it was an important album for Judas Priest and a great stepping stone for their later albums.
AFAIK, Priest never played Burnin Up live in concert. We have the beginning teaser for the intro to Exciter on Unleashed in the East but that’s about it. I’ve looked at the set lists from this time and have listened to quite a few bootleg live recordings, no Burnin Up. Thing is, that is a great song. I think it would translate well if played live.
You bring up numerous good points. When I first heard it in '85, I really didn't know much about the background info. I just knew that I liked HBFL better than any other JP album. Still do. Also, Binks is my favorite Priest drummer after Travis.
My friend saw them on the Point Of Entry U.S. tour when the shows were still smaller. He saw KK and Rob outside the venue and asked about what happened to Les. They said jokingly, "He's probably in some English jail"
Have to completely disagree with a couple points. Sin After Sin introduced shorter more melodic songs that were a bit less heavy looking for more commercial acceptance . Stained Glass went back to the more complete songs and dark gothic lyricism. Then when this album came out it went back to less gothic and more melodic “ commercial” style. But you are not wrong this was a very important transition album with things they did here stylistically coming together extremely well on their next album British Steel
My first Priest gig was Killing Machine tour at the Birmingham Odeon 🇬🇧 just brilliant, support band was Marseille, check them out, good band NWOBHM ✌️✌️
This album is almost my favorite priest album in fact it was my fave until point of entry started receiving bad reviews so for support reasons i choose point of entry but im a closet fan of hell bent for leather/killing machine its truely the best preist album. There you go rob i came out of the closet!
Judas Priest always had good songwriting, that set them apart from bands who just tried to play fast or intricate. that might please a musician, but most people want something they'll be humming later. JP was better at that than their peers.
I’d love to see your reaction to the new Metal Piano Music’s channel of their Judas Priest songs. They just released a piano arrangement of The Sentinel and I cannot stop playing it 😍❤️😍
The first Judas Priest album I ever bought was Sin After Sin, and at first, I did not care for it. I just was not ready for that dark Black Sabbath-like sound. But the album and that type of metal grew on me. When they did Stained Class, I just loved it. Every song to me was great! I played it for a friend of mine when I was in high school and it blew him away! It is still my favorite Priest album to this day! Then came Hell Bent For Leather and that all changed. It was initially a disappointment, but I later grew to like it. To me, it was their first "commercial" album. It had a lot of great songs that became classics for them over the years, and a few great ones that did not. Some of the songs to this day I still think are a bit bland, like Evening Star, Killing Machine, Take On The World, and Evil Fantasies. They did two more albums later on that I also thought were attempts at making a "commercial" album, like "Point Of Entry" and "Turbo Lover", the latter being not one of their better albums. Just my opinion and great video!
