Written by:	nikarg
Published:	September 03, 2020

Music has a very important role in my life. There is music playing through most hours of the day during the time I am awake. In that sense, it wouldn't be an exaggeration if I said that Painkiller changed my life forever. Those of you who are regular around here know that I'm not the youngest of the bunch. I just turned 44 (even though I look way younger and am still sexy af), which means two things: a) I am old enough to be the father of many of you (but, as far as I know, I am not), and b) I was there when Painkiller came out (which is way more important than the slight possibility of me being your long-lost dad). Today is the 30th anniversary of my favourite album of all time and, instead of a review, I decided to write about how I experienced it when it was released and how it feels to listen to it regularly up until this day.

1990 was a very good year for metal. Some of the biggest thrash bands released some of their most iconic albums before they all turned to shit. Personally, I was very much into thrash, having been introduced firstly to classic heavy metal by a friend at school. My friend Gregory taught me the basics; he introduced me to Iron Maiden, Helloween, Manowar and the other essential bands back in 1988, when the heaviest thing I had listened till then was Def Leppard's Hysteria (and I did listen to that vinyl a lot). By 1989 I was deep into thrash and death metal, looking for brutal and more brutal stuff because... you know? adolescence. We both used to listen to a couple of radio shows with that mate of mine and we recorded them on tape (yeah, cassettes) so that we could relisten and absorb everything. So, two two-hour radio shows, once a week was our metal fix. And Headbangers Ball, a show on MTV (when MTV still played music), also once a week. So, if we heard a song we liked and saw at the record store that the cover art was good, we just bought the album. Back in the day there was no free music; if you wanted to listen to an album, you had to buy it. In some other European countries, you could actually listen with headphones some of the new releases at record stores before making a choice to buy or not, but in Greece we didn't have it yet. At the time, my weekly allowance was used mainly to buy music; dating girls came a bit later.

It may sound romantic and olde, but to be honest I miss this era. Don't get me wrong, I embraced mp3s from the very beginning (yes, Lars, Napster too) and I absolutely love the fact that I now have YouTube and Spotify and can stream anything I want, but the magic of 'discovering' new music is partly gone. Also, with so much music around - and with unlimited access to it - it is impossible to actually give albums the same amount of attention and spins the way I used to. I have noticed that the 'playlist plague' has hit bands as well, in the sense that they are content to release an album with three or four good songs that they will use as 'singles' (another obsolete word) with the rest of the material being filler. But all this belongs to another article, because this one is about Painkiller.

When "Painkiller" was played on the radio in the summer of 1990, before the album's release I was flabbergasted. Luckily, my mate Gregory had recorded the radio show (and the song) because I hadn't. He lent me the tape to make a copy and I listened to the track incessantly until the album came out. However, I did record on a VHS tape the Headbangers Ball episode that played the video of it. I quite liked all the leather, the metal and the black eyeliner, but it was the actual song that was out of this world.

"Painkiller" was on a level of its own and it floored me immediately; it was love from the very beginning. The insane drum intro, the guitars that rip the air, Rob's possessed vocals, the fact that at about 4'30'' you think it's over but no, there is one more round of pummelling before the end; this song had nothing to do with what I knew about Judas Priest. Over the years, it became my most played track and the album is the one I have listened to the most, regardless of music style. I have bought it twice because my original CD became unplayable (yes, I had just bought a CD player). I don't know the exact number of spins I've given it but it is definitely a four-digit number. It was - and still is - the fastest, most aggressive, and in-your-face album they have ever recorded. And they made it when everyone least expected it.

Four years before Painkiller, Judas Priest had released the very tame, uninspired and commercial Turbo. Ram It Down, which succeeded it, was slightly better but still featured those ridiculous guitar synthesizers and even some songs that were left out from Turbo. The title track of this album, as well as "Hard As Iron" hinted at what Judas Priest were still capable of but, frankly, no one anticipated the explosive energy and unrelenting power of Painkiller. The band also had to deal with the trial regarding "Better By You, Better Than Me", which started in July 1990 and pushed back the release of Painkiller. You can understand that under these circumstances it wasn't easy to make such a glorious comeback. In order to achieve that, Judas Priest had to do everything right.

And they did do everything right. They hired Chris Tsangarides to produce it, marking the first time since 1978's Killing Machine that they recorded without Tom Allom and the first time since 1976's Sad Wings Of Destiny that Judas Priest and Tsangarides worked together. The result was a crisp and full sound that finally had the bite that the two albums before it didn't. Even today Painkiller doesn't need a remaster. They also recruited Scott Travis to take the place of longtime drummer Dave Holland, who had left the previous year. Travis's heavy use of double kicks rendered their sound more aggressive and perfectly complemented Tipton's and Downing's constant attack of riffs and solos. Once again, Rob's versatile vocals are extraordinary, but Painkiller is the album on which he uses everything he's got and it is his greatest performance. Finally, Judas Priest ditched the synthesizers almost completely, with the exception of Don Airey's dark and brooding contribution on the album's second single, "A Touch Of Evil".

Painkiller is pure fucking metal. It has ridiculous lyrics about 'chrome monsters' and 'steel warriors' that I know every word of and can recite perfectly even without the music playing in the background. It has astounding musicianship and songwriting with everything about it turned to 11. Just before the quality of heavy metal and thrash metal took a nosedive, Judas Priest released the absolute heavy metal banger, boosting it with speed and power and thrash steroids, and thus making it an album that - to me - remains unsurpassable to this day. Its influence was immense; iconic bands like Death would cover its songs and other bands like Primal Fear would build an entire career because of this record.

Judas Priest never managed to release anything quite like this again. Halford left in 1992, a decision that was actually one of the main reasons why I abstained from metal almost entirely through the '90s. His solo album, Resurrection, is what could have been a commendable follow-up to Painkiller but it is not a Judas Priest album. The three records after the reunion with Halford are not bad, but not that special either. Thankfully, in 2018 they did release what would have been a worthy successor of Painkiller. With Rob Halford and Ian Hill just before their 70s, and with Glenn Tipton fighting Parkinson's disease, Firepower is an achievement almost as superb as Painkiller.

I guess that much of what I have written here has already been said about Painkiller. It has been lauded by so many people all these years and it deserves every praise. I tried to present a more personal view of it and I hope I have succeeded because this album is a really important part of my life. I remember listening to it back to back all day after returning from school, singing the lyrics word by word, air-guitaring, air-drumming, air-everything. All these years and even during the times when I have taken a break from metal altogether, Painkiller is still the album I go back to regardless of my mood or the situation I am in. I listen to it when I am happy, when I am sad, when I am angry and it always fills me with energy and joy. I have ran a whole marathon wearing headphones and playing just this album on repeat (this is quite a few repeats). 30 years since its release, I still get the feeling that anything is possible whenever I play it and my heart becomes 14 again.

In the words of Rob Halford himself: "The music that touches you in your youth is magnified as you get older. Each record can be a virtual time machine - all you need is to hear a second or two and you go back to that place and time when you first heard it. It's a brilliant feeling when music touches you so profoundly and stays with you through time". This sums up exactly what Painkiller does to me.

Happy birthday Painkiller. Music made by the Metal Gods.

"Faster then a laser bullet
Louder than an atom bomb
Chromium plated boiling metal
Brighter than a thousand suns"