Judas Priest - Sad Wings of Destiny

For a sophomore album Sad Wings of Destiny is perhaps one of the more important records in heavy metal history. Judas Priest, alongside Black Sabbath, had issued a small, seemingly insignificant dent in the music world two years prior with the 1974 Rocka Rolla album. While very good, it was hardly the typical metal beginning by any standards, at least dependant on with whom you speak. However, the usual subjectivity aside, 1976’s Sad Wings was the very beginning of one of the greatest rock bands in history.

For a hard rock bluesy outfit with some catchy songs, Priest hit the proverbial mark with this record. For your dollar this is one of the highest examples of the classic Rob Halford vocal. While tracks from Rocka Rolla such as the title track and “Cheater” were creating the spark, this album really got the fire going. The track listing on this release is one of the strongest for the genre, with tracks like “Tyrant”, “The Ripper”, “Victim of Changes” and the absolutely classic “Dreamer Deceiver”. The band was finding its musical chops, so to speak, with the dual guitar work of K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton leading the way. Everything that was to become Judas Priest is to be found here.

On a relative shoestring budget for 1975 Sad Wings creates an indelible and emotional chasm, shaping my personal catharsis; the music here continually creates a seesaw effect from the truly epic “Island of Domination” to the tragically beautiful “Dreamer Deceiver”, which possesses one of the greatest Halford vocals ever. When listening to “Island of Domination” and hearing Halford’s three-part octave vocalization in the beginning you can’t help but be impressed. Whereas later songs like “The Sentinel” or “Painkiller” would be staples of the Metal God’s vocal range, the primitive beginnings on Sad Wings are not to be dismissed or ignored - they are Rob Halford at the truest peak.      

For a time of Black Sabbath’s Sabotage, Rainbow’s impressive debut Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow and Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti it might have been easy to let Judas Priest drift off into the “two-and-through” pile of music history. However, the complete picture was beginning to emerge on this album that is rife with songs of vision and majesty, hauntingly beautiful passages of introspection, expertly-crafted music and the world’s greatest metal vocalist. I sometimes think the production values might have been better from reel-to-reel since the crispness is so alive, virtually breathing on this album. Vinyl buffs must have a field day with this when it’s played through a modern hi-fi.

Yes, Priest has the mighty Screaming for Vengeance, Defenders of the Faith and the recently reissued British Steel, but what defined the sound and vision of heavy metal is all-encompassing here in the nine songs that make up this seminal album. For the true Priest fan and metal fan in general it’s always a plus to venture back and see what happened in the very beginning of this crazy movement we call metal music.

It should leave you speechless.

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Sad Wings of Destiny is my favorite Judas Priest album, bar none, hands down, unapologetically.

I remember when Defenders of the Faith hit in 1984. I immediately got tickets to see them at the Rosemont Horizon and saw for the first of many times the mighty Judas Priest in all its glory. However, three years before this I bought a copy of Sad Wings and recall there being a tremendous difference in the music from this and British Steel, which I had discovered in 1980. In my youthful exuberance I was more taken with the vocals on Wings as opposed to Steel simply due to the fact that Rob’s singing on the former was more emotionally charged, relying more on raw feelings than polished energy for my taste. Don’t get me wrong, Steel is as epic today as it was for me thirty years ago, but when I think of soaring Halford vocals and fine-tuned blues-metal I immediately think of “Tyrant” or “Deceiver”, which could wake the dead on any given day.

Judas Priest is third on my all-time favorite bands list, in back of the Beatles and Black Sabbath in that order. These three bands are responsible for making me a musician, singer, writer, “well of musical knowledge” (according to those that feel I need this tag when they introduce me to friends) and, most importantly, a fan. They are part of the “Big Three” for me: I have always said that Sabbath started our movement, Priest perfected it and Maiden brought it to the States. We are incredibly indebted to these bands and everything I am today is partly due to Judas Priest. When I would warm up my voice before singing I would almost always use the Beatles cover of “’til There Was You” and Priest’s “Dreamer Deceiver/Deceiver” and it felt good to be Rob Halford and Paul McCartney for a couple of minutes, if even in the confines of a garage on 65^th Street on Chicago’s southwest side as a sixteen-year-old whelp.  

I have been listening to Sad Wings for the better part of three decades and this album never gets boring or tired. All of the emotional strife that existed in my head and stomach during those tumultuous teenage years was made easier to weather partly due to this album. It is as much an integral part of my childhood as much as Rubber Soul and Sabbath bloody Sabbath are, and it is with genuine affection and love that I think of this album. When I hear the familiar strains of “Victim of Changes” or the destructive force of “Genocide” I always feel I’m thirteen again. It’s like I’m redoing a part of my life that was beyond magic, settling somewhere between maudlin confusion and teenage ignorance, and I am thankful I was intelligent enough to understand the heavy metal culture early on, one that I embrace, has graciously accepted me and one I proudly champion for today.

We all have albums that make up our true selves, no matter the genre, era or circumstances. These records are small photo albums, doors always open to the past that we venture through when we wish to seek that yesterday that modern science tells is unattainable. For me Sad Wings of Destiny is a skeleton key back that fits the door to the world I so carelessly ignored and left for dead as days passed too effortlessly back then. It stands up better today than it did thirty-five-years ago, certainly in part to the legend that Judas Priest has forged for itself. I also think the masses of metal legions are in tandem with classical music enthusiasts in cerebral fortitude and genuine absorption ability, able to fully decipher and embrace the music as it is meant to be enjoyed. We don’t get enough credit for this, especially with the Beavis and Butthead rape job of our scene still looming overhead some fifteen years later. In that regard it’s left to us, the fan and thinker, to keep the past alive.

This is the album to do just that - it keeps me going and it makes me happy to be alive and have lived through the metal explosion of the Eighties.              

Release Date: March 23, 1976
Label: Gull Records

TRACK LISTING

1.  Prelude (Instrumental)
2.  Tyrant
3.  Genocide
4.  Epitaph
5.  Island Of Domination
6.  Victim Of Changes
7.  The Ripper
8.  Dreamer Deceiver
9.  Deceiver

Total playing time:  39:10

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Classic Review

June 30, 2010

Reviewer: Chris