I’m cranking the hi-fi high today for my favourite Judas Priest album: 1978’s Killing Machine. Alternatively titled Hell Bent For Leather in some countries, Killing Machine continued the band’s impossibly superb run of metal-defining 70s albums and was their most red-blooded and raunchy release to date. Alongside megaton leviathans like the resolute Delivering The Goods, the turbo-charged Hell Bent For Leather and tough, direct rockers like Running Wild are songs like the glam stomper Take On The World and the wonderfully wistful Evening Star that managed to simultaneously evolve and simplify Priest’s style without diluting their lethal state-of-the-art metal godliness.
HEAVY METAL OVERLOAD 
I’ll never get tired of this album, but let’s not forget the amazing ballad Before the Dawn!
The last Priest album of the first phase. Or, perhaps, the first of a new.
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I usually think of it as the last of the first but it’s kinda both! The more commercial anthemic kinda thing starts here eh? And Before The Dawn is brill yes.
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Yes, I believe some of the songs here lead directly into British Steel. Take On the World = United, and so on.
Of course the real shakeup happens when Allom and Holland join the fold. Bizarrely, in my 1988 Halford interview, he states that the band felt their real beginning was when Holland joined the band, and the true Priest came into being.
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Yep there’s a lot in common with British Steel although I prefer this one overall. Interesting that Halford feels that way. I can kind of understand why he would, but I prefer the pre-Holland years myself.
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Felt that way… I doubt he’d say that today! I don’t even care for British Steel that much. It would be in my lower Top Ten.
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Yeah me too. It has grown on me a bit over the years but it’s never been a favourite.
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It just is. I actually prefer Point of Entry. Just more fun to me.
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I feel that way too.
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Because you’re a guy with taste 🙂
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PRIEST!
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Great album! On another note, on my latest post, I wrote about a new band called Slave to Sirens. I would love to know your thoughts on the band.
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I love that pic of Halford in his full Sid Snot regalia
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