New Albums

Judas Priest

Demolition

SPV/Steamhammer

It’s been a decade since Rob Halford left 80s metal icons Judas Priest amidst controversy over his sexual orientation—his bandmates were not comfortable with the idea of a homosexual frontman. So, they picked up Jack “Ripper” Owens, lead vocalist for Priest’s most prominent cover band and tried to recreate the magic—they have yet to fully succeed.

The band’s latest release, Demolition, does revisit much of what was great about Priest—headbanging riffs combined with technically exacting melodies, soaring vocal screams and crowd-chanting lyrics, but while these elements endure, it is safe to say that none of them has been expanded or improved.

While one must laud guitarists Glenn Tipton and K. K. Downing for their technical skill, this is not an album chock-full of either memorable hooks or more than a few moments that inspire the same emotion as Priest classics like “Breakin’ the Law.” The album’s final track, “Metal Messiah,” shows, however, that Priest still contain the elements for fist-pumping arena action. The most up-tempo song on the album, it blasts open from the outset with a chugging and brutal riff, soon layered with the second guitar ringing out sustained harmonic notes. It quickly stalls into an off-and-on backbeat and then enters a classic Priest chorus, where Ripper wails the kind of cheesy-yet-appealing lyrics that won Priest fanfare in the 80s: “He’s the man / Armaggeddon / Walking through fire / Metal Messiah!” The song also contains one of the album’s most furious solos, and even a bridge with a Middle Eastern ambiance, as guitars warble like sitars.

Other highlights include the power ballad “Close to You,” which just might bring a tear to one’s eye given a few beers beforehand, and “Devil Digger,” which builds a thumping and grinding riff so great that one would find it hard not to at least bob a head to, if not bang. “Cyberface” sounds alarmingly derivative of a Rammstein song, with slow and thick riffing ensconsed in a keyboard melody, which shows that the band is not altogether above nabbing appealing aspects of modern music, but fans will be happy to hear that Priest have not gone so far as to throw any rap into their 21st century debut.

Overall, the record is entertaining, but it is not a new standard in metal or the beginning of any new chapter for the one-time kings of leather and chain. In “Devil Digger” Ripper asks the question, “Who wants to grow old?,” before repeating again and again, “I don’t want to fade away / I don’t want to fade away.” With their long-established and steady fan-base, Priest’s disappearance is not imminent, but with their inability to reinvent themselves in Halford’s absence, the fading has already begun.

—Michael T. Packard

The (International) Noise Conspiracy

A New Morning, Changing Weather

Burning Heart Records

The (International) Noise Conspiracy is a Swedish punk-rock band with a definite mission. The band is philosophically autonomist Marxist—each of their songs is revolutionary in nature and political in content and quote authors such as Noam Chomsky, Samuel Beckett, George Orwell and, of course, Karl Marx. The album insert includes an essay entitled “The Global Fear Factory,” an earnest and slightly naïve piece about how capitalism breeds “subtle and diffuse low-level fear” and how resistance movements are springing up “on a plane internal to capitalism, erupting all over its body.”

The songs on A New Morning, Changing Weather are similarly revolutionary in nature, although sometimes verging on the ridiculous—the absurdly-titled “Capitalism Stole My Virginity” is one example. The trouble with the album is that the songs aren’t all that good. The (International) Noise Conspiracy has a distinctive sound, similar to that of Millencolin and Pennywise, but their songs all sound as if they have been constructed the same way.

The lyrics have much more importance than the music here—in this way, A New Morning is like a more sincere version of Pennywise’s release from earlier this year, Land of the Free? The album has a few songs that catch the listener’s ear— “A Northwest Passage,” “Up for Sale” and “Dead Language of Love” are highlights—but taken as a whole, the album has little to offer unless you are a passionate capitalism-hater.

—Daniel M.S. Raper

Ozzy Osborne

Down to Earth

Epic

“Elvis is dead, and Ozzy is the King!,” screams one incensed fan in the multimedia movie that is included on the Dark Lord of Metal’s first album in six years, Down to Earth. The 11 songs on this long-awaited opus give credence to the man’s claim, and confirm again that Ozzy Osborne is metal’s consummate symbol and one of its most talented artists.

The album begins with the brooding and thudding riff of “Gets Me Through,” a song dedicated to Ozzy’s legion of committed fans, to whom he says, “I’m not the anti-Christ or the Iron Man / I try to entertain you the best I can / But I still love the feeling I get from you / I hope you’ll never stop cause / It gets me through.”

The album as a whole contains much of what the Ozzman’s fans have come to expect—aggressive guitar work coupled with periods of keyboard melody, all swirled with the master’s voice, one that remains as haunting and powerful as it was when Black Sabbath emerged from the slums of Birmingham, England over 30 years ago. Zakk Wylde, guitar God responsible for much of the music on Osborne’s last three albums, returns to lend his axe to the effort. While his unique funk/chunk distortion and timbre are evident, the lack of gratuitous pitch harmonic riffing, Wylde’s trademark, reveals one fact some may find disturbing—that the songs were written by committee. Mixer Tim Palmer (who has worked with pop-rock stars U2 and death metal mainstays Sepultura among others) and producer Marti Frederickson (the vocalist for the fictional band Stillwater in “Almost Famous,” and a contributor in works from Aerosmith and others) joined Osbornes’s tour guitarist Joe Holmes as co-writers on the bulk of the album’s work.

This collection of writers may have managed, however, to create some new classics. “Facing Hell” stands out, with its steady but alternating riffing, highlighted by more than a few of Wylde’s pitch-harmonic squeals. So does “No Way Out,” which contains the most impressive finger-tapping, string-bending solo on the album. “That I Never Had” is another up-tempo track with a pace reminiscent of earlier hits such as “Desire” and “I Don’t Want to Change the World.” As always, Ozzy illustrates his sensitive side, and while “Dreamer” comes across as somewhat trite and derivative of the Sabbath ballad, “Changes,” the song “Running Out of Time” is a moving power ballad in the mold of “The Road to Nowhere.” On the track, Osborne laments some of his life’s earlier chemical and criminal debauchery (the pill poppin, Alamo-desecrating and dove-slaying), “All the things I put me through / I wouldn’t wish my life on you / Just another lonely broken hero / Picking up the pieces of my mind / Running out of faith and hope and reason / I’m running out of time.”

While Osborne’s distinct stuttering in some recent interviews illustrates the wear and tear of his glory/gory days, the thundering riffs and catchy melodies of “Down to Earth” show that he is still the most marketable and accessible man in metal. As usual, Osborne leaves the rest of the world wondering, “How long can he keep this up?”

—Michael T. Packard