•
Rating: The 1978 was a particularly significant year for the career of Judas Priest, as the Birmingham group, after the somewhat unconvincing offering in the album 'Sin after Sin', released, within a few months of each other, two excellent albums such as 'Stained Class' and 'Killing Machine' ('Hell Bent for Leather' in the American edition), often considered by many as the cornerstones on which the future NWOBHM would be based.
Let's focus, on this occasion, on 'Killing Machine'. The album begins with the powerful Delivering the Goods, marked by Rob Halford's aggressive vocals, in continuous alternation of highs and lows, and the guitars of Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing: A piece with a cohesive structure that has the continuous sonic wall created by the group as its distinctive feature. The following track, Rock Forever, is characterized by a hard rock guitar riff, well supported by Ian Hill's bass and Les Binks' excellent drumming, in his last appearance on record with the group: the piece is catchy, with a pop-like structure, and Halford alternates his proverbial highs with almost spoken parts. Evening Star is a soft/hard track that, in the typical style of Judas Priest, echoes the teachings of the early Led Zeppelin, with an easily memorable melody suitable for radio audiences, whom the Priest never despised; the central solo is also excellent, with the two lead guitars alternating with each other.
Harder territories, close to the sounds of the contemporary 'Stained Class', are explored by Hell Bent for Leather, with a very tight rhythm section and unusually low vocals, where Halford showcases great versatility and dramatic ability. Take on the World, almost the Priest's answer to Queen's We will Rock, is a track explicitly intended for live performances, with an alternation of solo voice and choirs, supported by an almost martial drumbeat, allowing listeners to identify with the singer and follow the band. The following songs form the heart of the album, which, far from showing any drop in tension, demonstrates its qualitative peak here: Burnin' Up, introduced by some sinister synthesizers, benefits from a series of supersonic riffs that explode in the pressing chorus, with Halford in splendid form: the central break is excellent, where the rhythms seem to slow down, the drums continuously vary the rhythms, and the singer lingers in his atypical spoken parts until the central solo. The Green Manalishi (originally included only in the American vinyl but now present in the CD edition), a Fleetwood Mac cover, denounces the group's influences and at the same time reveals the Priest's discontinuity from tradition: hard blues is revisited with an essential technique, where no note is wasted, and, above all, with a new attitude, not found in other bands of the '70s: a concise and complacent expository violence, with an almost kitsch and aestheticizing trait, unlike the punk nihilism emerging in those years, it is already heading towards the hedonism of the '80s, of which the Priest will be heralds in the hard and metal domain.
The following Killing Machine reprises the dynamics of Burnin' Up, with Halford's almost gasping singing and the guitars executing tight lines: a very brief break introduces the central solo, with markedly heavy evolution. Runnin' Wild is a fast ride in purely heavy metal territories, a forerunner of many Iron Maiden pieces, though less pompous and intricate, and close to Motörhead, although played and executed with more class (but less brutality) than Ian "Lemmy" Kilmister's band. Before the Dawn is an acoustic ballad, with a melancholic flavor, where Halford's singing is particularly mournful: the melody and the composure with which the group, accustomed to other sounds, accompanies the lead voice without unnecessary burdens that sometimes afflict similar pieces is splendid, and the central guitar solo is excellent, in tune with the spleen felt when listening to the song. The concluding Evil Fantasies is a syncopated hard/heavy track, with a particularly intense central theme, where the group portrays at the peak of form the latent violence typical of the album and the themes covered in the lyrics.
The CD edition, besides offering a live version of Riding on the Wind, also presents an unreleased studio track, Fight for Your Life, which is nothing less than a primitive version of Rock Hard Ride Free, contained in the subsequent 'Defenders of the Faith' (1984): a splendid piece, inexplicably excluded from the album, far superior to the version made in the '80s (with a different chorus), which marks particularly sharply the crossover practiced in the '70s by the Priest: hard & heavy united in the same song, a bridge between past and future.
In conclusion, it is an excellent effort: different from 'Stained Class', perhaps less uniform and more open to contamination between genres, 'Killing Machine' is an album recommended for all those who love hard rock, where the feeling within the group emerges much more than in the more refined (and artificial) subsequent productions.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
01 Delivering the Goods (04:16)
[Tipton/Downing/Halford]
Feeling like we're, ready to kick tonight
No hesitating, my bodies aching
Looking for some action, satisfaction all right
Charging, vein faced, as active as one-hundred solid proof
Megaton, Leviathan, we're ready to hit the roof
You better watch out and hold on tight
We're heading your way like dynamite
Uhhh, Delivering the goods
Uhhh, Delivering the goods
Shake down, rock 'em boys, crack that whip strap mean
Pulse rate, air waves, battle lies in every place we've been
Stealing your hearts all across the land
Hot blood doing good, we're going to load you with our brand
You better watch out and hold on tight
We're heading your way like dynamite
Uhhh, Delivering the goods
Yeah, Delivering the goods
Have it your way
Stealing your hearts
Well we don't pull no punches, we aim where the crunch is
Bound to do most damage to your brain
If you're looking for it mellow
you're nothing more than yellow
Gonna do it again and again
We'll beat you to submission
So you might as well surrender
You gotta learn your lesson
'Cause there ain't nobody here to bail you out
Faster, higher
'Til it seems that we're gonna break
Ohh shootin' further, giving more than you're ever gonna take
Leaving your heads
Crushed out on the floor
Begging for mercy
Be careful or we'll do it some more
You better watch out and hold on tight
We're heading your way like dynamite
Uhhh, Delivering the goods
Uhhh, Delivering the goods
02 Rock Forever (03:19)
When the day is over,
I like to ease my mind
By jucin' up my system,
With the beat of a heavy kind
I smack a bottle open,
I crank the hi-fi high
I'm in-a seventh heaven
Ooh I can touch the sky
I'm in love, so in love
And I can't stop talking 'bout my rock forever
It's got the movin' to me,
just that I can't explain,
It's like a brilliant sunshine,
After standing in the pouring rain
My skin begins to tingle,
Ooh right on down my back.
It's really got me fevered,
Pounding my senses flat.
I'm in love, so in love
And I can't stop talking 'bout my rock forever
Rock rock rock forever
Rock rock rock forever
Rock rock rock forever
Rock rock rock forever
I can't stop talkin' about
Rock
Now get it right, boys
So when you get those blue days,
Here's just what to do
Switch into this lifeline
And feel it rushing through
Before you know it, blue days
Are better left behind
By juicin' up your system
With this beat of a heavy kind
I'm in love, so in love
And I can't stop talking 'bout my
Rock forever Rock forever
I'm gonna rock forever.
03 Evening Star (04:05)
I travelled to a distant shore
I felt I had to go
An inner voice had called me there
But why I did not know
I saw the evening star rise up
Shining out to sea
And now I understand at last what it means
What it all means
Evening star I can see the light
Evening star guiding me so bright
I used to tempt fate
I couldn't see straight
I faltered through my younger days
Never knowing where I was going
Then something helped me penetrate the haze
Evening star I can see the light
Evening star guiding me so bright
Now I am stronger
The haze no longer
Ruins my future destiny
Such inspirations and new sensations
Pull up these string ties chasing me
Evening star I can see the light
Evening star guiding me so bright
I'm home once more, much better for
The things that I have found
Much wiser now, so simple how
Each time I turn around
I see the evening star rise up
Shining out on me
And now I understand at last what it means
What it all means
Evening star I can see the light
Evening star guiding me so bright
04 Hell Bent for Leather (02:40)
Seek him here, seek him on the highway
Never knowing when he'll appear
All await, engine is ticking over
Hear the roar as they sense the fear
Wheels! a glint of steel and a flash of light!
Screams! from a streak of fire as he strikes!
Hell bent, hell bent for leather
Hell bent, hell bent for leather
Black as night, faster than a shadow
crimson flare from a raging sun
An exhibition, of sheer precision
Yet no one knows from where he comes
Fools! self destruct cannot take that crown
Dreams! crash one by one to the ground
Hell bent, hell bent for leather
Hell bent, hell bent for leather
There's many who tried to prove that they're faster
But they didn't last and they died as they tried
There's many who tried to prove that they're faster
But they didn't last and they died as they tried
Hell bent, hell bent for leather
Hell bent, hell bent for leather
Hell bent, hell bent for leather
Hell bent, hell bent for leather
06 Burnin' Up (04:05)
You stitch me up good, and you cut me down
So I string you up to keep you hanging around
You dish the hot stuff up but you keep me waiting
So I'll play it dirty 'til your body is breaking
We've got to make love, the time is right
We've got to make love tonight
'Cause we're burnin' up
You make me greedy, you won't feed me my food
But I'll make out easy, 'cause I see straight through you
You cool me off and hot me up and that's not right
'Cause you'll get hungry in the heat of the night
And then we'll make love, just when it's right
And when we make love tonight
We'll be burnin' up
I know you feel the same
I know you feel the flame
Staring deep inside of you
Burnin' you up, breaking you down
Breakin' you out in a cold sweat
And as you lose control, of your very soul
Your desire takes over
You'll feel the heat sway
You're round to my way
And suddenly you'll know that you're burnin' up
You stitch me up good, and you cut me down
So I string you up to keep you hanging around
You dish the hot stuff up but you keep me waiting
So I'll play it dirty 'til your body is breaking
We've got to make love, the time is right
We've got to make love tonight
'Cause we're burnin' up
We're burnin' up
07 Killing Machine (03:01)
[Tipton]
I never give true answers, I never tell no lies
I never walk a straight line, so never get surprised
I don't ask no favors, so don't get abused
I learned to win when I was young
So I'm never ever gonna lose
They pay me the money and I do the job
I got a contract on you
I got a contract, on you
I never ask no questions, I never speak my mind
I always found that silence helps to keep me in my kinda life
I take care of business, It takes care of me
I look after myself and do it well
'cause somebody's always looking for me
They pay me the money and I do the job
I got a contract on you
I got a contract on you
What manner of man am I?
A gun, lump sum and then I move on
What manner of man are you?
Stab a friend's back to jump a queue
I do what I do 'cos I can't do nothing better
You do what you do, just defendin' yourself
'cos you got nothin' better to do
I got no face, no name, I'm just a killing machine
I cut the population down, if you know what I mean
I never stop in one place, I move about the cities
Got expensive tastes, but I hasten to add that
I'm the best that there is
They pay me-uh the money and I do the job
I got a contract on you
I got a contract on you
I got a contract on you
I got a contract on you
09 Before the Dawn (03:22)
Before the dawn, I hear you whisper
In your sleep "Don't let the morning take him"
Outside the birds begin to call
As if to summon up my leaving
It's been a lifetime since I found someone
Since I found someone who would stay
I've waited too long, and now you're leaving
Oh please don't take it all away
It's been a lifetime since I found someone
Since I found someone who would stay
I've waited too long, and now you're leaving
Oh please don't take it all away
Before the dawn, I hear you whisper
In your sleep "Don't let the morning take him"
Loading comments slowly
