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One of heavy metal's most prolific spokesmen,
"Judas Priest," are recorded live for the first time
in over ten years with their newest 2 CD release " '98 Live
Meltdown." This, their third live recording over a glorious
twenty plus year career, features the best of their influential
classics, old and new, and concentrates on highlighting the uproarious
vocal talents of their latest singer Ripper Owens.
In striving to recapture the incredible
live response the band is used to receiving from their overwhelming
legion of fans, the disc was recorded with this in mind, with
the only mixing involved to further exploit the already explosive
audience interaction. Otherwise, there are no signs of overdubs
or any type of technological tampering - just Priest at their
professionally damaging best.
Just about anything any Priest fan could
want is contained in the set, and one would be hard pressed for
want of anything more. Owens does a superb job in interpreting
the live feel of the songs as he belts out one after the other
in a vocal tirade that, for them, hasn't been heard in years.
Whether he's revving up the Harley bound for hell, or raising
the roof on one of their trademark anthems, there is little doubt
that he's done anything but firmly establish his position as
the right man for the job.
Revving the crowd up at every angle, Owens
"rips" through the group's earliest titles like "Grinder,"
"Rapid Fire" and "Beyond the Realms of Death,"
sounding most comfortable, and later tearing up the newest songs
like "Bullet Train," "Death Row" and "Painkiller,"
with the same maximum intensity they were designed for. Listening
to both discs without following along the track listing helps
to increase the feeling of actually being there. " '98 Meltdown"
signals the beginning of another awesome spectacle that first
began with "Judas Priest," and will see their music
continue to explode with such volume and force so as to still
leave shockwaves of deadly magnitude over an already badly scorched
earth. |
