“Painkiller” by Judas Priest

"Painkiller" opens Judas Priest's 1990 album of the same name, their twelfth, and it's the sound of a veteran band stamping on the accelerator. It kicks off with new drummer Scott Travis in full flight, an intro he worked up in the studio as a warm-up while the engineers were checking his microphones. Then Rob Halford comes screaming in, higher and nastier than ever, while Kenneth Downing and Glenn Tipton trade solos and Ian Hill locks the bass to Travis's double-time pummel.

Halford, Downing and Tipton wrote it about the title character on the album cover, a cyborg superhero who swoops in to save mankind from destruction. It's speed metal at its most unhinged, and one reviewer later said nobody saw it coming. Tipton counts its solo among his favorites to play, and it has become one of the band's best-loved songs.

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