The Batlord

Judas Priest: Jugulator

This is one of the most maligned albums in all of metal. This was Judas Priest's first album without Rob Halford and the first with Tim "Ripper" Owens. Obviously no matter how good a vocalist he is the fans were gonna hate this album to some degree. I never listened to the whole album, but I always loved the title track, so I'm gonna see if the hate is truly justified...




Pretty much this is Painkiller mixed with Machine Head's Burn My Eyes. On paper this should be awful. A trad metal band trying it's hand at thrash/groove metal? Gag. And I can't say I'm the biggest fan of either of those albums anyway. Burn My Eyes is just too samey and I'm just not a big groove metal guy in the first place. Painkiller was great when I was younger, but it's lost a lot of its charm with repeated listens. Yet weirdly enough, I think that Jugulator actually manages to make those elements work. There really are some truly kickass songs on here, and Judas Priest are almost, dare I say it, brutal at times. There's a lot of neo thrash style chugging riffs that may not be to everyone's taste (they're not usually to mine either), but Judas Priest's grasp of dynamics gives this an energy that keeps the energy flowing so that one is never really bored. It also helps that Owens' vocals aren't nearly as dull as Robb Flynn's. Hell, I think his vocals on here are better than Halford's on Painkiller. Rob Halford's vocals on Painkiller sometimes feel they're being high pitched just for the sake of being high pitched and I end up being a little bored as a result, whereas Owens' vocal style actually suits more aggressive metal in a way that Halford's just doesn't. I imagine that if I were in the same room as you people that I'd being picking cabbage from out of my hair by now, but I'm the Guardian of True Metal here and you're just peons, so kiss my ass.

Aside from the fact that it doesn't really sound like a Priest album, I think that the main charge that could be laid on this album would be that it's mind numbingly dumb, and it certainly is. It's one of the dumbest albums you'll ever hear in fact. I mean, Jugulator? Really? But you must know me well enough by now to know that cheese and stupidity are no barriers to me. Seriously, if you can't love a song that uses "jugulate" as a verb, or that says, "Jugulator killing time now/Reaches in and rips your spine out" then you are a boring person and we are not friends. It's not like Judas Priest were ever the most intelligent band in the first place. The video to "Breaking the Law" had the band robbing a bank with the power of metal for god's sake. If that isn't jumping the shark then I don't know what is. So, if you complain about this being stupid then you must have a skewed view of Judas Priest in the first place. I think the cheesiness works in its favor actually. It keeps it from descending into brainless tough guy dullery like Pantera or cliched, dark, fuck-the-world lyrics like Machine Head.

So, in closing, Jugulator rules, and you don't.

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