Blindspotting: Judas Priest, "British Steel"

The Legacy: After flirting with mainstream breakthrough status for a few years and/or albums, Judas Priest perfected their formula with 1978's Hell Bent for Leather, which swapped out their druid robes and proggy lyrics for studs, leather, and somewhat less proggy lyrics. Encouraged by the improved financial returns that greeted that record, they dialed everything up to 11 for their next record, 1980's British Steel. The result was not only a Top 5 UK hit, but the album that laid the template for the rest of their career — and, arguably, the rest of the "serious" metal released for the balance of the decade.

First Impressions: I should say up front that this really isn't my thing, but if I'm listening while wearing my Rock Critic hat, it's a fairly fascinating artifact. It's been argued that Judas Priest walked so bands like Metallica could fly, and that's a fair point; while it'd probably strike you as fairly quaint if you went in cold and someone told you British Steel is a foundational thrash metal album, you have to think about the context of its era, and what any other mainstream metal act was getting away with in 1980. Between the caffeinated tempos and singer Rob Halford's operatic style, this record makes a persuasive argument for Priest as the James Brown of their subgenre.

It's also a fascinating artifact in that, if you're old enough to remember its era, British Steel actually sounds like the inside of an average (white suburban) teenage boy's bedroom at any point between 1980 and, say, 1992. And I don't just mean in terms of the notes being played or the volume at which they're being played; I'm also talking about the claustrophobic mix, which traps the band in a shoebox along with a bunch of stray seeds and stems and probably also a dirty gym sock.

Again, this really isn't my thing, and I would also submit that some of it hasn't aged particularly well. Listening to the bland sci-fi and anti-authority lyrics in tracks like "Metal Gods" and "You Don't Have to Be Old to Be Wise" in 2025, at least from a lyrical perspective, feels like listening to something a smartass jerk might come up with as a parody of a song that a dummy metalhead would love at any random moment in the '80s. But on the other hand, it also fucking rocks, and since that's the only thing it's supposed to do, arguing against it feels like the waste of time it truly is.

Favorite Song: The first time I ever heard "Breaking the Law" was during an episode of Beavis & Butt-Head, which naturally fills me with nostalgia today, but that song still doesn't get my pick. Instead, I'm going with "Living After Midnight," probably because it feels like the bluesiest song of the bunch.