Band:	Judas Priest
Album:	Sad Wings Of Destiny
Style:	Hard rock, Heavy metal
Release date:	March 1976

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

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.

Sad Wings Of Destiny was important not just for the period in metal's history at which it was released, but also for its unique variety of sounds. Few times before, if at all, had a metal band dabbled so wonderfully with the classic metal sound and a more melodic undertone. There are some basic, straight up metal tracks, such as "Genocide," "The Ripper," and "Tyrant" (the latter containing some early elements of speed metal). And then there are some more mellow, laid-back tracks, with very beautiful, ballad-like atmospheres: "Dreamer/Deceiver" and "Epitath." This heavy/melodic variety is only augmented by the stunning vocal abilities of Rob Halford. Say what you want about his abilities now, but the simple fact of the matter is, back in the day, the guy was a singing virtuoso. "Victim Of Changes" is a great illustration of his wide range: from the moderate vocals in the beginning, to the lows in the middle, all topped off by his falsetto shrieks at the end.

And still another innovative feature on Sad Wings Of Destiny is the lyricism. Not since Black Sabbath had a metal band written about topics of such a dark nature, such as serial killers ("The Ripper"), dictators ("Tyrant"), and war crimes ("Genocide"). Said lyrics may not be as gruesomely realistic as those of, say... Cannibal Corpse, but they can still be seen as laying a groundwork for the "horrors of real life" theme that countless subsequent metal bands would take with their lyrics, and this is important.

Sad Wings Of Destiny was an album far ahead of its time, and is just as important now as it was nearly 40 years ago. It is one of the very few albums that helped to literally define metal as a genre, and lay down its basic foundations that hundreds of later bands would add to and build upon, and for that it will certainly stand the test of time. If someone were to ask me "what is heavy metal?" this would be one of the first albums I would point them to.