Judas Priest - Redeemer of Souls

(CD Album Review)

****
Priest are back!

One can debate about 'Nostradamus' all day I think any sensible Judas Priest fan can conclude it should have been condensed down to one disc and although it didn't quite come out right it was a brave step to take, a good thing for the band to do and when all is said and done it wasn't a complete mess of the standard of say 'St. Anger'. Anyway with news of a new album upon the horizon fans united in joy as we all new it would inevitably be a classic Judas Priest album unless they had gone complete bonkers! First thing that's to be said about 'Redeemer of Souls' is that it is a grower, it's not immediate like say 'Painkiller' or 'Defender's of the Faith' were those albums jumped out and attacked you this one reveals something more with every listen and rewarding repeated listen's it does.

Opening with 'Dragonnaut' again as I mentioned earlier rather then 'Painkiller'. As a track 'Drangonaut' is more in the vein of 'Rapid Fire' the whole album has that "Classic" Judas Priest feel about it. The band sound confident. A lot of older bands try and up the ante on heaviness and speed to sound more up to date but not Priest here you have an hour or an hour and a half if you got the deluxe edition of solid well written traditional Heavy Metal. 'Redeemer of Souls' gallop's along nicely leading to the brilliant 'Walls of Valhalla' this is quite an epic track and shows Rob Halford still has tremendous range and power with his vocals.

'Sword of Damocles' has a beautiful melody running through it and brings to mind later day Iron Maiden or at least the later part of Bruce Dickinson's solo career. 'March of the Damned' is a personal favorite on the album, it's has that classic 80's sounding Rock feel to it and I can picture it on the soundtrack of the 'Warriors' or 'Rocky' it's very chest pumping and has a great atmosphere and catchy as hell it was the first track to stand out for me. 'Down in Flames' is another classic Judas Priest song that's in the vein of 'Riding on the Wind' or 'Rock Hard, Ride Free'.

I could go on and on, but all you need to know is that... if you see Judas Priest live doing a two hour set full of classics they can drop in any track from this album and it will fit perfectly. Some songs aren't as good as other's and some review's I've read have made a big point of that but I put it down to nit picking there might be the odd track that doesn't reach the height of others but there isn't a flat out stinker on the album.

It's beautifully presented the artwork is brilliant the deluxe comes in a nice hard book case and you get five extra tracks... so why wouldn't you want that one? the extra songs are worth the extra bit of money. This is most likely to be Judas Priest's last album and like Black Sabbath's excellent '13' it out does all expectations. If this is it then you can't ask for more from a final album and it up the ante and pressure for Iron Maiden to deliver the good's on their's!!!

Review by Joe Denby