Ozzy Osbourne’s favourite Judas Priest album: “One of the best metal bands of all time”
Good bands come along all the time. Chances are, right now, there will be a good band releasing music. However, there are very few bands that come around that completely change the course of the world and culture as a whole. This happened in the 1960s, when four lads from Birmingham grouped together to form a rock band. That band? None other than Black Sabbath.
They only had a matter of hours to record their first album. You see, their sound was relatively unconventional at the time; there was certainly something to it, people liked it, and labels recognised the potential, but they also recognised they were taking a risk pumping money into a formula that wasn’t proven to work. As such, they weren’t willing to pay for more than a day’s studio time.
This ended up working in Black Sabbath’s favour, as their debut album had to be near-enough recorded live, which added to the gritty and heavy-sounding nature of it. It’s still regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time by many people, but it wasn’t just how it sounded that made people like it; it was the new sound that they had tapped into that excited people. Long story short, it gave rise to what we now know as heavy metal.
Every rock band with an edge to them, and every heavy-sounding band that you enjoy listening to, whether they acknowledge it or not, owes a great deal to Black Sabbath. Without Sabbath, the genre would look different, as the band set the foundation for heavy metal that people built upon from that moment.
Of course, while Sabbath might have established the sound of heavy metal, there were other bands that came along and helped define other things within the genre. One of them was Judas Priest, who took what Sabbath did and ran with it, while also embodying a look and a performance style that would also become a quintessential part of metal. Leather, spikes, energy, it was all a product of Judas Priest, who are an equally respected band within the world of metal music.
Ozzy Osbourne is never shy about talking about how much of a fan he is of the band. When he was asked about what his favourite heavy metal albums of all time are, he was quick to offer up Judas Priest’s sixth studio album, British Steel. The band were well established at this point, but this record, filled with tracks such as ‘Breaking the Law’, ‘Rapid Fire’ and ‘Living After Midnight’, really caught the attention of the public and critics alike. It is still revered as one of the greatest metal albums of all time, and for good reason.
“What can I say?” said Osbourne when he was discussing the record, “The guys in Judas Priest are not only mates of mine from my hometown of Birmingham but one of the best metal bands of all time.”
He certainly has a point, there is an energy packed into that record which is difficult to describe, it’s something that needs to be heard to be believed, as listeners put their headphones on and are swept up in a chaotic frenzy of distortion and screeching.
