Judas Priest
Painkiller LP vinyl

Recorded in the months leading up to the groundbreaking trial in which Judas Priest was accused of including a subliminal message in its cover of Spooky Tooth’s “Better by You, Better Than Me” on 1978’s Stained Class—a track the parents of two young men who attempted suicide claimed led their offspring to shoot themselves—Painkiller remains the heaviest, fastest, and most aggressive album the metal legends ever made. It still looms as one of the genre’s front-to-back masterworks, a molten-hot slab forged out of desperation, determination, and a desire to prove relevancy.

On its two prior albums, Judas Priest turned away from its hallmark British New Wave of Heavy Metal style to embrace digital synthesizers, disco-derived beats, and commercial devices that seemingly announced the band having lost the plot. Marking the debut of drummer Scott Travis, and attacking with a sheer ferocity without ever forgetting the importance of maintaining strong melody, Painkiller reversed all such thinking. It also came out as America entered the Gulf War, a conflict that appeared to further stoke the band’s fury.

NEW / Released in 1990 / Reissue 2017

Tracklist:

A1 Painkiller

A2 Hell Patrol

A3 All Guns Blazing

A4 Leather Rebel

A5 Metal Meltdown

B6 Night Crawler

B7 Between The Hammer & The Anvil

B8 A Touch Of Evil

B9 Battle Hymn

B10 One Shot At Glory