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Judas Priest - Sad Wings Of Destiny



8.7 | 1053 votes |
Release date: 23 March 1976
Style: Hard rock, Heavy metal

Owners:

1104 have it
103 want it
1 trades it


01. Victim Of Changes
02. The Ripper
03. Dreamer Deceiver
04. Deceiver
05. Prelude
06. Tyrant
07. Genocide
08. Epitaph
09. Island Of Domination

Top 20 albums of 1976: 3
Top 200 albums of all time: 162
Featured in "Getting Into: Judas Priest"

Line-up
Robert John Arthur "Rob" Halford - vocals
Kenneth "K.K." Downing - guitar
Glenn Raymond Tipton - guitar, piano
Alan "Skip" Moore - drums
Ian Frank Hill - bass

Additional info
Produced by Jeffrey Calvert, Max West and Judas Priest.

Guest review by
Auntie Sahar
Rating:
9.0
Few times in the history of heavy metal has the entire genre's future depended so much upon the release of a single album. Black Sabbath did it with their 1970 debut, Metallica with Kill Em All, Death with Scream Bloody Gore... and a small handful of others. One of those others happened to be Judas Priest, with 1976's now-legendary Sad Wings Of Destiny. Though the band certainly couldn't have imagined it at the time, this release would in turn spearhead the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, which would subsequently influence many American metal fans, leading ultimately to the beginnings of thrash metal and the other soon-to-come extreme metal sub-genres, fundamentally altering heavy metal forever, into the current form that we all know and love today.

Read more ››
published 01.02.2012 | Comments (16)

Found in 79 lists
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Comments page 2 / 2

Comments: 46   Visited by: 1497 users
08.09.2020 - 21:41
Rating: 9
majormalfunction
Milestone album at it's release and still holds up extremely well. Not a single weak song, couple of absolute classics and Rob on top. A weak 9 but still a 9.
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22.10.2020 - 20:38
Troy Killjoy
perfunctionist
Staff
Musically this does almost nothing for me aside from a few impressive leads and solos, but that just speaks to my personal tastes never really aligning with heavy metal as a standalone genre.

That said, Halford's vocal delivery is god-tier. Imagine listening to this guy shake the walls and shatter glasses of the local pub before hitting it big.
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"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
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23.10.2020 - 23:51
Rating: 10
meister J Steele
Steelemeister
Best JP with Painkiller for me. "Victim Of Changes" and "Tyrant" definite fav JP songs ever
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My vision is augmented
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22.07.2022 - 13:09
Rating: 6
Roman Doez
Hallucigenia
The ripper and deceiver are bangers, the rest is alright
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22.07.2022 - 13:49
Rating: 9
Redel
Moderator
Written by Roman Doez on 22.07.2022 at 13:09

The ripper and deceiver are bangers, the rest is alright

Didnt you talk about 70s Priest being so much better than Painkiller only recently?
Where is 70s Priest better than Painkiller if not here (well and Stained Class if you ask me)?
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22.07.2022 - 15:01
Rating: 6
Roman Doez
Hallucigenia
Written by Redel on 22.07.2022 at 13:49

Didnt you talk about 70s Priest being so much better than Painkiller only recently?
Where is 70s Priest better than Painkiller if not here (well and Stained Class if you ask me)?

No, this is my first time listening to 70's Priest. The only thing I said was that Screaming For Vengeance was better than Painkiller. And BTW, I do like this album more than Painkiller as well
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22.07.2022 - 15:04
Rating: 9
Redel
Moderator
Written by Roman Doez on 22.07.2022 at 15:01

Written by Redel on 22.07.2022 at 13:49

Didnt you talk about 70s Priest being so much better than Painkiller only recently?
Where is 70s Priest better than Painkiller if not here (well and Stained Class if you ask me)?

No, this is my first time listening to 70's Priest. The only thing I said was that Screaming For Vengeance was better than Painkiller. And BTW, I do like this album more than Painkiller as well

Ok, then it was someone else. Someone said that recently here, at least I do recall so.
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22.07.2022 - 15:29
Rating: 8
AndyMetalFreak
A Nice Guy
Contributor
Written by Roman Doez on 22.07.2022 at 13:09

The ripper and deceiver are bangers, the rest is alright

They are good songs but "Victim Of Changes" is my favourite song off this album, and one of my all time favourite Judas Priest songs.
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22.07.2022 - 18:01
A Real Mönkey
Painkiller stomps this any and every day.
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04.05.2023 - 08:52
Rating: 10
Cynic Metalhead
Ambrish Saxena
Everytime you listen to Dreamer, it's becoming the best outro ever. Classic.
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04.05.2023 - 11:32
JoHn Doe
Written by A Real Mönkey on 22.07.2022 at 18:01

Painkiller stomps this any and every day.

So your opinion on this album is that Painkiller is better?!
OK...
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I thought the two primary purposes for the internet were cat memes and overreactions.
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04.05.2023 - 15:15
A Real Mönkey
Written by JoHn Doe on 04.05.2023 at 11:32

Written by A Real Mönkey on 22.07.2022 at 18:01

Painkiller stomps this any and every day.

So your opinion on this album is that Painkiller is better?!
OK...

And don’t you forget it.
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04.05.2023 - 15:33
JoHn Doe
Written by A Real Mönkey on 04.05.2023 at 15:15

Written by JoHn Doe on 04.05.2023 at 11:32

Written by A Real Mönkey on 22.07.2022 at 18:01

Painkiller stomps this any and every day.

So your opinion on this album is that Painkiller is better?!
OK...

And don’t you forget it.

Well, I find Painkiller rather overrated and overhyped, so there you go...
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I thought the two primary purposes for the internet were cat memes and overreactions.
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20.02.2024 - 22:04
Rating: 8
F3ynman
Nocturnal Bro
Contributor
Concerning Sad Wings of Destiny, I absolutely love the first half of the album. Rob's voice on "Dreamer/Deceiver" is simply magical. "Tyrant" is also good. The rest of the second half, however, doesn't really do it for me. I know people are sick of comparing albums, but Stained Class is the overall better 70's Priest experience. It might not have the epic melodic highlight of "Dreamer/Deceiver", but it does have "Beyond the Realms of Death". And it's well paced, the quality of every song ranges from great to perfect, and I just love those catchy grooves like “White Heat, Red Hot” and “Better By You, Better Than Me”. Anyway, back to Sad Wings. It's definitely a landmark for its time, was a great starting point for Priest's development, and simply deserves all the praise it gets.

Addressing the comparisons made to Painkiller, both in the comment thread of Sahar's staff review and here in this thread, I want to lay out some of my thoughts. So, I'm sorry in advance for the rambling, but, hey, a comment section is meant to be filled, right?

Anyway, yesterday I was listening to my compilation CD of Judas Priest while studying. And it hit me again why I love this band. The tracklist of the compilation CD is structured chronologically, so one can nicely follow the historical evolution of the band. And what a fascinating evolution it truly is. For instance, I'm listening to the heartfelt “Diamonds and Rust”, when I'm suddenly faced with the speed metal “Exciter”. Next up is the epic, melancholic ballad “Beyond the Realms of Death”, only to be immediately followed by the groovy rock anthem “Hell Bent For Leather”. One after the other, you've got such drastically different styles, but they all are so entertaining, so well done, and somehow all feel so much like Judas Priest. What does that mean? Well, it certainly helps that the lineup stayed incredibly consistent over several decades so that, no matter what they play, that guitar duo, that voice, that groove are so uniquely recognizable. No matter how much they veer away from the style of their early days, there's some unidentifiable core element to their sound that always stays there.

That takes us to Painkiller. The extreme culmination of a long journey through various styles: from sweet melodies like “Epitaph” to stadium anthems like “Breaking the Law”, from fun glam metal like “Turbo Lover” to the ominous battle cries of “Blood Red Skies”. And yet, after listening to all those mixing moods, my jaw still drops at that drum fury, those lethal guitar riffs, and those iconic shrieks from hell in the one and only Painkiller. I wasn't there in the 1990, but I imagine it must've taken a lot of guts to release such an intense, unrelenting rollercoaster. Sure, thrash and death metal were already invented by other bands at that point, and Priest had fast and mean guitar riffs on Defenders of the Faith and Ram It Down. But never had Rob screamed so anti-melodically, with so much rage that, if you look back at the melancholic “Dreamer/Deceiver”, you could mistake him as an entirely different person. On Painkiller, they went all out, going for the throat, pulling no punches, throwing all this passion and skill into a melting pot of intricate guitar solos, pummeling percussion, menacing riffs, and gloriously catchy songwriting to string it all together.

I'm amazed at how the band keep reinventing themselves every few years and somehow keep succeeding no matter what they do. For a question like Sad Wings vs Painkiller, it's almost impossible to compare, let alone to choose one. They clearly had totally different goals in mind when creating those two albums, and, therefore, what a listener prefers will depend on what they want from the music. You want beautiful vocals and epic lamentations? Sad Wings is your best bet. You want to bang your head till it comes clean off? Painkiller is right this way. Personally, no matter what I want from heavy metal, I can always find a Judas Priest song to reliably deliver the goods. As KK Downing once said (according to the booklet of this compilation CD), “Black Sabbath are heavy, but Judas Priest are metal.”
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20.02.2024 - 22:12
Guib
Thrash Talker
@F3ynman2000 reading you is always a blast. Never apologize for taking space in a comment section man.

I agree, you can't really compare those 2 albums. One thing is sure, both kick ass and this kind of debate/conversation just goes to show how varied their discography is and how much of an impact they had on the scene. Judas Priest is such a fantastic band.
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- Headbanging with mostly clogged arteries to that stuff -
Guib's List Of Essential Albums
- Also Thrash Paradise
Thrash Here
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02.04.2024 - 18:13
Rating: 10
The Galactician
Written by F3ynman on 20.02.2024 at 22:04

One after the other, you've got such drastically different styles, but they all are so entertaining, so well done, and somehow all feel so much like Judas Priest.

This right here explains why I love Priest so much. When I was a young metal head I honestly didn't take any real notice of them until Painkiller came out, and even then it took me years to go back and explore their catalog. When I finally did I understood what all the fuss was about, and why they are one of the greatest bands of all time.

Their range and ability to successfully style-jump is amazing.
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