10 Perfect Metal Albums With Only One Bad Song
4. United - Judas Priest
If you wanted to really make the case, Judas Priest may be the one band that truly started heavy metal.
As much as Black Sabbath may have gotten the ball rolling, it was the Priest who self identified as something a lot heavier and created an entire tribe of fans behind them to become modern metalheads. So on what was supposed to be their masterpiece British Steel, they tore through one of the most pedestrian ballads of their entire career.
That's not to say that Priest can't pull off ballads, with songs like Diamonds and Rust being one of their best takes on the softer format. On United though, the energy is not really there, with most of the band sounding like they're half asleep as they play this song in the studio. Even though it's acceptable to not grandstand on a ballad, the lyrics don't really help matters either.
The message of the song is amazing though, being an anthem for metalheads being outsiders and always sticking by each other no matter what. When you hear that paired together with some of the most barebones riffs in the Priest catalog though, it almost comes off like Rob Halford deliberately trying to undermine the song lyrics for some reason. Metal may be for the outsiders and people on the fringes of society, but we also definitely have better ballads than this.