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Album Details

• Artist: Judas Priest
• Album: Hell Bent For Leather
• Label: Columbia
• Year of Release: 1978
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: gwhill on 2012-10-29

Hell Bent for Leather was definitely a departure in terms of sound for Judas Priest. It veered towards what would be the more pure heavy metal sound they would soon fully embrace. Because of the point of transition the set (entitled “Killing Machine” everywhere but in the United States) represented, really no other album in Judas Priest’s catalog sounds like this one does. It’s a little inconsistent in some ways, but still has enough exceptionally strong material to make it a winner.

Hell Bent for Leather is really an album of contrasts. The title track is a classic that has remained a showstopper in the band’s set for years, as has the cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Green Manalishi.” In contrast “Rock Forever” is energized, but quite generic and a bit of a throw-away. “Evening Star” continues the sort of melodic, rather mystical sounding musical concept of “Beyond the Realms of Death” from Stained Class. “Take on the World” features the stripped down percussive backdrop with anthemic group vocals that showed up later on several Priest songs. It’s the kind of thing you either like or don’t, but it’s similar to Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”

Other notable tracks include the hard rocking opener, “Delivering the Goods,” “Burning Up” and the extremely mellow ballad “Before the Dawn.” All in all, Hell Bent for Leather is an album that makes good use of sonic peaks and valleys, but also tends to seem inconsistent because of a lack of consistency. It is a classic Priest album, nonetheless. In some ways it doesn’t hold up as well as some of the other discs in retrospective, but really showed the start of a lot of the leather gods concept that became such a trademark of Judas Priest and heavy metal in general.

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