And sometimes you end up onstage

Skip to 2:00 for the most awkward cameo in the history of live performance. It felt like 5 minutes.

"Painkiller" is the Best Judas Priest Album

A while ago I was listening to a couple of old windbags hack their way through the Judas Priest catalog. After loving homages to Ram It Down and Turbo, they made it to 1990's Painkiller. They probably spent about 45 seconds going through the tracklisting and saying, "I don't remember any of these songs. I don't remember listening to it. It probably sucks. Next." Oh no they didn't.

My theory is that if you don't get Painkiller, you don't get Judas Priest. It's everything the band embodies taken to the absolute extreme - do you want to see the band jog some leisurely laps or break the damn sound barrier? There's no half-assery going on with this baby, and as far as I'm concerned, it's the best record the band ever made.

Painkiller can most obviously be seen as a reaction from the old guard to the thrash movement. The Clash of the Titans tour was going at full force, and speed was king with bands like Anthrax, Slayer and Metallica (the Black Album wouldn't be out for another year) shredding metal into submission. Judas Priest heard this stuff and said, "OK, you kids think you're hot shit? Step aside for dad to show you how it's done."

The title track is the most blatant crusher, opening with a drum solo and with at least four hyper-shred guitar solos that make bands like DragonForce weep in their tasteless shame. Halford cranks the fantasy apocalyptic imagery up to 10 and screams his head off more than he ever had before, something you wouldn't expect 16 years after the band's first album. That would be like Metallica releasing their heaviest album in 1999 - and instead, they made an album with a damn orchestra. Anyhow, most Priest fans are already familiar with the title track, since it's a live staple (and Death's Death's worshipful cover of it eight years later brought extreme metal fans back to check it out). I want to take a look at some of the deeper cuts, since this thing is a brilliant slab of metal across the board and deserves to be treated as such.

"Hell Patrol"

This is my favorite song on the album and features what I consider the best Rob Halford vocal ever. Much like the title track, it's immediate how much the switch in drummers to Scott Travis has changed the band. It's like he rolled into practice one day with a double-kick pedal and said, "Hey dudes, look what I found. Let's use this as much as we can." Hit 2:47 for the ultimate in Halford brilliance - bummer how he takes it down an octave now in the live shows. The band actually dragged this song out on its first post-Nostradamus tour, which excited me a great deal. I wish they'd dusted off this next bad boy, too.

"Night Crawler"

First of all, any metal song that opens with thunder has to be good, right? "Black Sabbath," "Raining Blood," etc. Thunder means glory is imminent. This track has another top notch Halford vocal, which is really one of the most consistent things about the album. It makes me wonder if he knew this would be his last album with the band and so he just went all out for it, or if maybe the album was so damn heavy that he knew he wouldn't be able to top it until he was like 60 and wouldn't be expected to be that brutal anymore. I'm a big fan of the riff in the chorus, which brings back riffing along the lines of "Electric Eye," and the bridge at 2:36 is quite great.

"Metal Meltdown"

Just imagine these dudes trying to play that intro now. That's shredding beyond shredding, kids. This song has a particularly terrible set of lyrics, but if you're paying attention to those, you're missing the point. Every word to this song could just be "metal" and it would have the same effect. There's another clutch Scott Travis drum performance on here, and the guitars are really taken to the edge of taste. Isn't that the whole point, though? Do we really want a mid-tempo groove here? Screw that. This song is called "Metal Meltdown" for a reason.

As I said before, I'm of the mind that if you don't get this album, you don't really get Judas Priest. Everything that's great about the band - the grandiosity, the twin guitar attack, Halford's wail - is here at its most powerful. There's no point in having the guys retard their abilities, and on Painkiller, they were taking them as far as they could go at the time. It doesn't have to be tasteful - it's metal.

I Love "Chinese Democracy"

Chinese Democracy landed with a big thud last November. It didn't really have a hit, the band didn't support it with a tour, and the album became a laughingstock, its name synonymous with big expectations that fall flat. But I think it has some of the best songs in the band's catalogue, and is ultimately one of my favorite albums of 2008. It's the only album in years that I raced to the store first thing in the morning to pick up, even if I was the only one there. Well, me and one other dude.

For a decent part of last year, my beat was keeping tabs on Chinese Democracy leaks, something I relished. I also may have inadvertently participated in a guy getting picked up by the FBI, but he's the one who posted stolen songs online, I just reported on it. Sorry, dude. For the most part, I was really surprised at how much I liked what I was hearing. I'm admittedly an Axl apologist (what, do we suddenly not want our rock stars to be totally insane and egotistical? that's practically the definition), even without the rest of the band around him. I'm the only guy I know who thought the band's 2003 VMA appearance was really, really impressive, and the snippet of "Madagascar" they performed at that show stuck with me for five years.

So on my last day at that aforementioned job, when I managed to get my hands on an advance of Chinese Democracy, I was a pretty happy dude. It was quite a chunk to sit through at once, but I heard enough to convince me that this was something I was going to enjoy. There were lots of new elements that didn't quite fit the GNR style of old, but hey, it was like 14 years after they'd released anything, so I was willing to adapt. Here's a rundown of what I see as the greatest moments on an album everyone wants to hate, even if they haven't listened to it.

"Street Of Dreams"

This is a song that remained essentially unchanged for at least seven years. It was called "The Blues" for a while until Axl decided the song wasn't bluesy enough, which it really isn't at all, and was performed for the entire time the band toured before the album's release. I'm going to be honest, I hate the first two minutes of this song with Axl in his warbly quaver voice, but as soon as the key change comes in (at 2:33 in the above video, where he also gets all catty) and he sings the "I don't know just what I should do" bit, the song becomes absurdly perfect from then on out, and as a big sap, I think the line "What I thought was beautiful don't live inside of you anymore" is pretty damn great as a kiss-off.

"Madagascar"

This song was played at the aforementioned VMA performance, and the complete over-the-topness of it totally grabbed me. I was bummed to hear on the studio version that he'd toned down some of the vocals on what had previously been more screechy parts and replaced them with a low tenor, but it's still good in my book. I can just see him slaving away at this track for like 10 years and finally hitting a take that sounds the same to all of us as every take before it, but somehow made the most sense to him. It's tragic there isn't a documentary of the making of this album, even if it would have taken like 15 years to make. I think it would have sold better than the album did.

"This I Love"

Ignore the video element of the above clip, some clown just made it and it's the only way I could post the track. Anyhow, this, along with the next song, are my favorite cuts on the album, and they're also the closing duo. What really struck me right away about this song is how uncomfortably direct and specific it is lyrically. There's no metaphors to veil what he's getting at, and it's blunt and pleading and borderline pathetic in terms of how overwrought he feels. But that sort of nakedness isn't something Axl has really given us before, so it's pretty surprising. His vocal performance is nothing short of great, and the brief, piercing guitar interludes are the perfect compliment to the keys that dominate most of the instrumentation. The last bit of the song, around the 5:00 mark in this video, is probably the highest he's ever sang with a 'clean' voice in the band's history.

"Prostitute"

This is the song that made me turn and stare at the CD player I was using to listen to the heavily (but not heavily-enough) copyproofed disc. From the start, there's an incredible sense of building and momentum that no other track on the album had. Instead of getting a chorus right away, we get a few prechoruses which seem good enough on their own, but all of the sudden Axl jumps from a 7 to a 10 and goes absolutely nuts right around 2:45 and drives home the most satisfying chorus I'd heard in a long time. It's also somewhat clever how the song title doesn't quite refer to what you'd expect, but rather Axl respoding to people's expectations about him, which, while it's clearly unnecessarily defensive and self-centered, still catches you a bit off guard.

When people chuckle as I try to explain why I love Chinese Democracy, here's what I say: I treat it as Use Your Illusion III. The previous two albums were nothing close to cohesive pieces of work. You had crazy covers, experiments in different genres, epic ballads, and a few streamrolling rockers. And that's what you get on Chinese Democracy. There's no attempt at a big picture, and there really was no need for one. It's a collection of songs that are complete thoughts in themselves, but didn't warrant any grand concept or binding style. And after a decade and a half, would it make sense for Axl to come out with an album that sticks to one path? Hell no, this thing is all over the place, and as far as I'm concerned, that's exactly what I wanted.

Top 5 "Load" and "ReLoad" Jams

When examining two albums everyone loves as much as Metallica fans love Load and ReLoad, it was really hard putting together the top five tunes from one of the band's most bitchin' eras. I wish there existed a Year and a Half in the Life Of-style documentary about putting together these albums, because it would have been way more interesting than watching Lars go into total focus mode to play tambourine on "Nothing Else Matters." Some of these songs were never played live for ridiculous reasons; I guess everybody would rather pat each other on the back and sing "Life is ours, we live it our way" than get down with these grooves, but whatever. Audiences never know what's best for them. Here we go.

5. "Carpe Diem Baby"

See, this is a riff I would have come up with while noodling around in the lower register and just passed it by - but that's why I'm not in Metallica. James jammed that thing out, Lars said, "Wait, wait, play that again," and away they went. I mean, I'm guessing, but that sounds about right. That part about 3/4 of the way through where everyone drops out and James says, "Live win/Dare fail," and then the riff kicks back in has some badass punch and would have been a sweet spot for some pyro in the live show. A sadly missed opportunity.

4. "Wasting My Hate"

I always imagined the lyrics to this song were about two dudes staring each other down inside a pool hall before they went in the back and roughed each other up a bit. It reminds me of that scene in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia where the guy is telling the story about confronting a guy in a bar and ultimately has to take him out back and "tear his ass apart." That's what this song means to me. And putting "HATE" on the amps in this live video is a pretty sweet touch. I wish they did that for every song: "SORROW," "RIDE," "KISS." You feel me.

3. "The Outlaw Torn (Unencumbered by Manufacturing Restrictions Version)"

Fade-outs are ridiculous. But I also understand why Metallica needed every 78 minutes and 59 seconds for Load, so they had to gently trim the end of this dude here. But when they put out the "Memory Remains" single a whole year later, fans finally got what they had been clamboring for and were able to hear the full, uncut version. I think you'll agree it's worth it. Amusingly enough, this is one of the songs with more prominently-featured bass, but Newsted doesn't have a writing credit on the entire album. Bummer, dude. At least you have royalties from "My Friend of Misery."

2. "Fixxxer"

This song is such a crusher that the band has only tried to play it once, at Woodstock '99, and the strain was so much that they had to give up and fall back on their cover of "Die, Die My Darling." Load and ReLoad were the albums where the band opted to forego putting the entire lyrics in the liner notes, and instead just gave a taste of a verse or a chorus and some doodles - courtesy of James, I suppose. I think I remember the one for this song was a voodoo doll stuck with pins, which really hit home on the opening line when James sings, "Dolls of voodoo, all stuck with pins." He showed you what he was gonna tell you, and then he told you what he showed you. Presentation 101, handled masterfully. It also takes 1:10 to really kick in, which makes it all the more satisfying when you get into the meat of things.

1. "Bleeding Me"

Yeah, yeah, I know it's the obvious choice, but these things are for a reason. It's not my fault vanilla is the best flavor of ice cream or that Taco Bell makes the best tacos (it's in the name, duh), some things just are. Check out this gnarly chorus:

Caught under wheels' roll

I take the leech, I'm bleeding me

Can't stop to save my soul

I take the leash that's leading me

Here, he's clearly juxtaposing the way he sometimes lets his problems latch onto him or drag him around with the way he claims to be otherwise indifferent on "Ain't My Bitch." It gives us a staggeringly dichotomous view of James Hetfield, a man who feels. And this startling contrast is what makes "Bleeding Me" the best song of Load/ReLoad-era Metallica.

Honorable mentions:

"Low Man's Lyric"

I'm tempted to go buy another copy of ReLoad, because my "Low Man's Lyric" skips on the intro, and that drives me nuts. It draws me away from the hurdy-gurdy and sucks me back into the digital world of the CD, and shattering that illusion of streetcorner madness and downing bottles of Midnight Hobo is just unacceptable. This is also the only song I'll allow Metallica to perform while seated on stools.

"Better Than You"

Towards the end of middle school, there was this kid who was a real smug know-it-all and always got A's on everything. I thought, "Hey, I'm smart, too, I can do just as well in geometry and biology, I just really need to focus from the start of the year." So I remember using this song to get myself psyched up before the first day of school, reminding myself that I had this kid's number. A week later, I was back to cranking Superunknown and playing Diablo instead of studying. Go figure. This song is pretty much a variation on one riff, but I always really dug the guitar tone and thought the solo had a cool "less is more" approach. And hey, fake ending with 90 seconds to go! Also, talkbox.

Metal is neat!

Hey there, everyone. I just wanted to let you all know that I think this 'metal' stuff is pretty rad, and Twitter just can't cut it for being able to explain just how rad I think it really is. Ergo, welcome to Metal Is Neat.

I hope you'll come around for my next post: "Top 5 Songs off of Load and Re-Load."