{"id":13356,"date":"2014-07-11T01:00:11","date_gmt":"2014-07-11T05:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/?p=13356"},"modified":"2022-01-06T19:51:25","modified_gmt":"2022-01-07T00:51:25","slug":"album-review-judas-priest-redeemer-of-souls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/?p=13356","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: Judas Priest &#8211; Redeemer of Souls"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-13358\" src=\"https:\/\/southeastofheaven.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/Redeemer-of-souls-album-cover-art-1280-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"Redeemer-of-souls-album-cover-art-1280\" width=\"262\" height=\"262\" \/>Judas Priest &#8211; Redeemer of Souls<\/strong><br \/>\n<strong> Release Date: July 8, 2014<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s 2014 and the Priest is back! Did you just read that hearing Rob Halford\u2019s voice in your head? I thought so. I have been less than impressed with anything Judas Priest has put out since Painkiller but as always, I went into this album with an open mind and hoping for the best. Anyways, the Priest is indeed back with their 17th album Redeemer of Souls and in all honesty, if you ask me, this was without a doubt a swing and big ol\u2019 miss. The band released the first single \u201cDragonaut\u201d and the first thing I thought was that they just sounded tired and somewhat lifeless. When I finally got around to hearing the rest of this album it just solidified that fact for me. Priest swings\u2026 Priest misses.<\/p>\n<p>The songwriting on Redeemer of Souls is a big improvement from Priest\u2019s previous few offerings but the real problem here is in the delivery. For having such an awesome, young blood guitarist such as Richie Faulkner, you\u2019d think that the band would\u2019ve found some new energy and drive like they did when they released Painkiller. Instead, songs like \u201cRedeemer of Souls\u201d, \u201cHalls of Valhalla\u201d and \u201cMetalizer\u201d sound like rehashed, leftover riffs from Painkiller. Listening to Rob Halford on this album is just plain sad. The man who was once one of the most powerful, dynamic voices in metal now talks his way through most of these songs unable to even reach the heights that at one time only he could reach. \u201cSword of Damocles\u201d was actually a really good song that really reminded me classic Priest but again, Halford\u2019s lifeless vocal delivery just makes it fall completely flat.<\/p>\n<p><center><iframe width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/shwOv_J7QGo\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/center><\/p>\n<p>Musically I found Redeemer of Souls to sometimes come close to capturing the essence of classic Priest only to fall apart before the end of a song. As a whole, Redeemer of Souls sounded contrived, lifeless, bored, dishonest, and completely forced. Judas Priest just sounds tired and completely tapped out of ideas. I have been hearing so many people praising this new Judas Priest album that you&#8217;d think it was the second coming of Screaming for Vengeance. They must be hearing a totally different album because what I hear is a tired, uninspired, and bored band with a very tired singer who is barely a shadow of his former self. I just don&#8217;t get it and I\u2019m sure I will get a lot of shit for this but this isn\u2019t the first time a classic band has put out subpar product. Black Sabbath did it with \u201c13\u201d and Priest is doing it with Redeemer of Souls. You can praise it all you want because of the fact that it\u2019s Judas Priest but in my mind, just because a band is &#8220;legendary&#8221; doesn&#8217;t give them a hall pass to put out sub-par material.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Judas Priest &#8211; Redeemer of Souls Release Date: July 8, 2014 It\u2019s 2014 and the Priest is back! Did you just read that hearing Rob Halford\u2019s voice in your head? I thought so. I have been less than impressed with anything Judas Priest has put out since Painkiller but as always, I went into this album with an open mind and hoping for the best. Anyways, the Priest is indeed back with their 17th album Redeemer of Souls and in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,277],"tags":[628],"class_list":["post-13356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-album-reviews","category-music-news","tag-judas-priest"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13356"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19759,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13356\/revisions\/19759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.southeastofheaven.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}