JUDAS PRIEST — Rocka Rolla (review)

JUDAS PRIEST — Rocka Rolla album cover Album · 1974 · Hard Rock Buy this album from MMA partners
3/5 ·
SouthSideoftheSky
Proto-Priest

This is the debut album by Judas Priest and it is very different from all their subsequent releases. The music here is heavily Blues-based and, in sharp contrast to the next album Sad Wings Of Destiny, Rocka Rolla does not push things significantly beyond Led Zeppelin. Rocka Rolla actually sounds as if it is older than the five albums Black Sabbath had released at this stage. This means that Judas Priest would still have a long way to go musically before the masterpiece Sad Wings Of Destiny, released two years later.

Still, if you consider Rocka Rolla for what it is and solely on its own merits, you find a pretty nice Proto-Metal album with several good heavy Blues rockers that stand up pretty well beside similar releases of other bands from around this time. If I’m correctly informed the band opened for Budgie, Thin Lizzy and Trapeze in their early days and if their early stage act were anything like what is on this first studio album, they must have outshined their headliners by far!

I don’t think that this record was terribly important at its time and as such it is not even essential as a historical document. But it remains a good album that I often find more enjoyable and interesting than most of the band's 80's albums! But their best and most interesting period began first with their next album.
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