10 Hard Rock Debut Albums That Suck

Judas Priest never seem to get enough credit for being the world's first great metal band. Whereas acts like Black Sabbath or Deep Purple get the award for making the first metal songs, the genre didn't really have a name until Priest burst onto the scene with tracks like Hell Bent for Leather and Victim of Changes. On the first record though, we were exposed to Judas Priest: metal's greatest bar band.

Then again, it's almost hard even calling this a Judas Priest album considering the bulk of it wasn't even written by any of the core members. Instead, these songs were written by original vocalist Al Atkins, who quit before the album was even being made. As such, Rob Halford sounds so out of his element on this outing, with the lower register required for some of these songs not really giving him a chance to shine.

It also doesn't help that Atkins wasn't necessarily the greatest songwriter, with a lot of these tracks sounding like second-rate versions of the typical rock and roll you would find playing out of a dumpy dive bar at 2 in the morning. Though Rocka Rolla is technically proficient for what it is, when you know it's coming from the almighty Priests of metal, this feels almost blasphemous.