JUDAS PRIEST CD ALBUM "A TOUCH OF EVIL LIVE"—NEW+SEALED

HERE’S A RANDOM REVIEW...

I've been after a Priest live album that includes Painkiller for a long time now, and this particular one is nothing short of STONKING. That's right - I did just say STONKING.

It's by no means a perfect album - the tracks were obviously taken from different shows, and that does make the album flow a little less well. The songs, however, are more than worth it. This is heavy, heavy stuff - it has all the raw power and sheer ferocity that you'd expect from a band of this caliber.

The upside to the tracks being taken from different shows is that they've obviously cherry-picked the best ones, so I didn't find a single duff track on this album.

In terms of the selection, it includes Beyond the Realms of Death and A Touch of Evil, which show the kind of epic, artistic side of Priest that came through on Unleashed in the East with such songs as Victim of Changes.

The performances are things of beauty: Halford wails away with world-class vocals; Downing and Tipton deliver fearsomely heavy rhythms and unleash devastating solos left and right, while the thundering bass and drums power the whole metal beast along relentlessly. Moreover, the band display the kind of unified focus that makes the whole band function as a single metal monstrosity - it's greater than the sum of its parts. If you like any form of Judas Priest or heavy metal, you need to own this album.