20 Best Hard Rock & Heavy Metal Albums Of 2018 (So Far)

Everybody and their Grandma has already said that Firepower is the best Judas Priest album since Painkiller and, despite the fact that that’s a sentiment which has basically been reduced to cliché at this point, it would be extremely hard to disagree.

Judas Priest’s eighteenth (Jesus Christ…) album has the sheer infectiousness of the heyday of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal down to a tee, as one would expect, but then you find yourself being totally blown away by the sheer youthful energy and passion of taut anthems like “Lightning Strike” and “Never the Heroes”.

Andy Sneap’s masterful and crystal-clear production rewinds the clock for Priest by at least three decades, giving the veterans’ sound the clear-cut balls and liveliness of groups on this list that are a third of their age.

The true sign of just how brilliantly executed every facet of Firepower is is, if you were to remove all knowledge of context from your brain, you could easily sit down, listen to this record and imagine it being made in 1991 – a time when Judas Priest arguably sounded better than ever before.

Without a doubt, this is Judas Priest’s 13, their Black Gives Way to Blue, their – I’m gonna say it – Brave New World!