Judas Priest

Judas Priest came out of Birmingham in 1969 and spent the '70s hammering heavy metal into shape: twin lead guitars, a singer who could shatter glass and a sound as cold and polished as a blade. The core was bassist Ian Hill, singer Rob Halford and guitarists Glenn Tipton and K. K. Downing, and behind them the drum stool revolved until Dave Holland settled on it in 1979. "The Ripper", "Hell Bent for Leather" and the rest were built on precision, not sloppiness.

It took until British Steel, their sixth album, in 1980, for the rest of the world to notice, and then it noticed hard: "Breaking the Law" and "Living After Midnight" were short, sharp and chanted by every headbanger with a denim jacket. "You've Got Another Thing Coming" kept them roaring, and they're rightly counted among the bands that lit the fuse for the NWOBHM. With Scott Travis on the drums after Holland left in 1989, they made Painkiller, and its title track is a speed-metal assault that makes a mockery of any notion that the band was slowing down.

Halford walked out in 1992, Tim "Ripper" Owens sang in his place from 1996, and Halford returned in 2003. Downing left in 2011 and Richie Faulkner stepped in. A Grammy for Best Metal Performance came in 2010, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted them in 2022.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.