Unleashed in the East

Submitted by Richard Norbury on 18 February 2015 - 9:59pm

Cover:

Artist:

Judas Priest

album-ID:

a_164

Nationality:

Year:

1 979

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Exciter*Running Wild*Sinner*The Ripper*The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)*Diamonds And Rust*Victim Of Changes*Genocide*Tyrant

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_63

Now-num:

2 015

Spotify-URL:

2NDFw84v8oUouELMdzeYsb

Grooveshark-URL:

Unleashed+In+The+East+Live+In+Japan/3415155

Short-title:

Unleashed

nominator-ID:

u_14

Meeting-date:

Saturday, 28 March 2015

MusicBrainz-URL:

fc646256-f2f1-3c51-8004-0b6b1efe50c4

Wikipedia-URL:

Unleashed_in_the_East

Spotify-link-type:

album

Discogs-URL:

Judas-Priest-Unleashed-In-The-East-Live-In-Japan/master/26395

Allmusic-URL:

unleashed-in-the-east-mw0000194427

rdio-URL:

Judas_Priest/album/Unleashed_In_The_East_1

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117

reviewers-IDs data

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-25-

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86

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

Very metal

1-3-7

Having hated heavy metal and everything about it all my life, it's just typical that I find myself loving this.

The raw power of the two lead guitars is phenominal, the drumming crazy and incessant, and the vocal range displayed is just diabolical. The tracks are fast paced, choppy, and have enough length to ensure they have space to progress. I suspect this album has a bit of extra atmosphere, having been a live recording reworked, which makes it an even more impressive listening experience.

Highlights:

Exciter, a great opening track with great structure.

Sinner, with its awsome double lead guitar solos screaming from 4 mins in.

Victim of changes, shows a nice melodic prog rock element.
84

reviewed by

Richard Norbury
55

reviewed by

Mike Beaton

Aaaaargh!

I did not enjoy listening to this album. I think that, in music journals, albums are typically given for review to people who actually like the genre of music in question. That seems only fair. You don’t give a Judas Priest album to review, to someone whose musical taste centres around Nick Drake and Joni Mitchell. Not even if their taste extends as far as a bit of Bon Jovi, or AC/DC, or even Staind. Because the music here is quite another beast entirely. The album appears to just be someone screaming at me, and not to be redeemed by any humour at all. (Or so I thought; I now understand that there are actually covers of Joan Baez and Fleetwood Mac on here. I accept that this has to mean that I’m missing something. But I’m gonna say that I’m happy to leave it that way.) I also accept that this group wrote a lot of the rules for (genuinely) heavy metal. Good for them. And that they invented the leather and studs look, as used in this context (c.f. the Track Hell Bent for Leather – once again, there clearly is some humour going on here, but it’s still not getting through to me).

Basically, Judas Priest sound more angry than I have ever been. And I have been angry. Possibly angrier than I knew. But not as angry as this!

There are positives. If anything, the album genuinely did grow on me, over the two or three listens I was physically able to give it (though that is starting from a low base, and not arriving much higher). Rob Halford can clearly sing, and – whilst I didn’t detect anything special in the drumming – the guitarists here can clearly play. I’d just rather not have to listen to any of them doing any of it, ever again.

If I’m completely honest, I once used to have Take On the World (“Put yourself in our hands so our voices can be heard…”), as a dirty, guilty pleasure – when it was originally out as a single. It seems it was a dirtier pleasure than I knew; hearing more of Judas Priest has cured me of that one.

It should be admitted that there’s a sense of achievement in getting to the end of this album. It’s hard work: a bit like climbing a tall, bleak, windswept peak. But you don’t half fancy a nice, hot mug of cocoa afterwards. Or perhaps some hard drugs, to numb the pain.
50

reviewed by

Matthew Baker

Hello Cleveland!

The passing years have not treated this album too well. Today this just sounds like one massive collection of metal cliches, visually and aurally. Didn't find much to cling on to on this album. Rob Halford's voice is that kind of operatic thing that I really don't enjoy. Everything else sounds just kind of unremarkeable.

Extra points for being one fo the first lot at this kind of thing, to give them their due.
45

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

Victim of Rust

7

6-8

The bottom line was that I couldn’t see what it was offering to people who aren’t predisposed to like that sort of thing. If someone likes Heavy Metal then they’d probably like this but if they don’t they probably won’t, because it doesn’t offer anything unexpected, whatever Neil says. It doesn’t question the formula at all nor look anywhere else beyond the narrow confines of the template. To their credit they had seemingly been key in coming up with that template, so fair dues on that count. And fair dues they all perform their rôles convincingly, if unremarkably. I'm not sure I'll buy into the idea of Bob having a great vocal range, I think he sings within a slightly narrow selection of notes and then also sings some other ones up on a much higher register. The high ones do sound impressive, as they are all spot on, but otherwise I'm not feeling a variety of tone.

I had thought that song-writing was pretty nondescript but, being made aware that there are a couple of covers on here, it may be that it is really the treatment that is burying the songs. The only one with any ambition and which made any impact on me was Victim of Changes, where they varied the pace and the arrangement a bit and showed a bit of slick styling to the sound. Otherwise it just sounds like straight ahead Metal right through to me. There’s nothing particularly awful on it but barely anything to make me sit up and listen.