British Steel saw the band reprise the commercial sound they had established on Killing Machine. Although this time, they abandoned some of the dark lyrical themes which had been prominent on their previous releases, but some of it still remains. Rob Halford said the band may have been inspired by AC/DC on some tracks after supporting them on a European tour in 1979.
The album was recorded at Tittenhurst Park, digital sampling was not yet widely available at the time of recording, so the band used analog recording of smashing milk bottles to be included in "Breaking the Law", as well as various sounds in "Metal Gods". It was the first Judas Priest album to feature drummer Dave Holland.
Even thought "British Steel" wasn't close to millionaire sales as other related genre albums released decades later, this catapulted Judas Priest to the status of stadium headliners, it was the first salvo fired in heavy metal's ultimate takeover of the hard rock landscape during the 1980s. Packed with strong melodic hooks, British Steel is a deliberate commercial move, forsaking the complexity of the band's early work in favor of a robust, It was a convincing transformation, as Priest prove equally adept at opening up their arrangements to let the rhythms breathe.
The album was built around the classic singles "Breaking the Law" and "Living After Midnight," both big hits in the U.K., which openly posit Priest as a real-contender band for the first time. But British Steel is hardly a complete break from the band's past. There are still uptempo slices of metallic mayhem bookending the album in "Rapid Fire" and "Steeler," plus effective moodier pieces in "Metal Gods" (ostensibly about gods literally made of metal, though you know full well the band wanted a nickname) and the crawling menace of "The Rage," which features arguably the best Rob Halford vocal on the album.
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