Defenders of the Faith

[442w30]

Yeah, even as a huge fan, that was a WTF? moment.

I still dig the song though, it's so offbeat, the tune really works! I almost though he wasn't singing a love song to KK until I saw the video, or was it Glenn? We all know it wasn't Dave - did Dave even get to jump out of the magic door into his "fantasy"? LOL

Priest drummers are always getting dicked....

I'll leave the Dave Holland specific jokes to someone else.

[sevser]

"Point of Entry" ummm...

This (Hot rockin') has it beat...I'm not saying anything...But...notice Rob is left alone in the sauna...??? whats up with that?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki3TpFZY7cU

[Rsmacker]

We all know it wasn't Dave - did Dave even get to jump out of the magic door into his "fantasy"? LOL

Priest drummers are always getting dicked....

He certainly is getting dicked now, or has he been released? Him, Pete Townsend, Michael Jackson, Elton John, that's going to be one supergroup to avoid (especially if you are 10)

[Frigo89]

LMAO Dave Holland. pulled off some stupid shit, not to mention the fact that he was a TERRIBLE drummer!

Les Binks was the best guy they ever had.

Unleashed in the East, Starbreaker (track 13) 30 second drum solo, fuckin' MONSTER

[stevoc]

Priest has always been one of my ultimate fav bands. I got to see the Defenders tour at the Cow Palace in SF and it was totally awesome. They played such a great mixture of tunes at the show.

The Sentinal is also my favorite from this album. The back and forth soloing done at the show was just freakin' incredible!

[Nuclear Vampire]

Neil Kernon posts on another board I frequent and has said Rob fixed up some of his vocals and then a bit where KK broke a string was fixed. This is taken from the JP Info Pages:






THE RECORDING:
As the band made their second trek to Japan, the mobile recording units were out to capture the two nights in Tokyo on tape: February 10 at Koseinenkin Hall and February 15 at Nakano Sunplaza Hall. To keep things simple and raw, everything was captured live and mixed quickly:

"They just threw microphones up and it was raw Priest. We just banged it out there. We didn't spend much time mixing it, just a couple of days. Obviously, in this day and age, people are looking for different things. It did get to be a bit of a trend that if you don't spend at least a month mixing an album it's not going to be any good. You fall into the trap sometimes. It happens to all albums, not just live albums. You learn. The trap is you think the more time you spend, the more careful you are over things, the more records you're going to sell. That's not exactly true. It's the songs that count at the end of the day."
- K.K. Downing, Guitar, January 1989


CBS/Sony Records wanted to release a live recording of the Japan tour to give to the Far East fans as a souvenir, so members of the band spent several weeks at Ringo Starr's Startling Studios (set up inside John Lennon's former home at Tittenhurst Park in Ascot, England) mixing the recordings made in Tokyo earlier in the year. Neil Kernon (Producer and/or Engineer on albums by Queensrÿche, Dokken, Nevermore, Cannibal Corpse and many others) was brought in to engineer the live recordings into an album. Neil had started fresh out of high school working for Essex Music in charge of sheet music and songbook production. It was here that he was encouraged by non other than original Priest producer Rodger Bain to apply for a job at Trident Studios, based to his musical interests and background. Neil eventually did get a job at Trident - as a teaboy, but over the next four years, he progressed to engineer working on albums by such greats as Queen, David Bowie and Elton John along the way! After branching out from Trident Studios, Neil began working for artists such as Yes and the Sex Pistols directly and in various studios until he wound up working for Ringo Starr's Startling Studios as Chief Producer/Engineer. It was at this time that Judas Priest rolled through with their raw mix of the Japan tour... Afterwards, Neil signed to Hit And Run Music as a producer, where he handled pop acts such as Hall And Oates. While he reached multi-platinum success, his heart was still in guitar-driven heavier music, so he returned to the sounds he loved to work with and eventually formed his own company, Auslander.

"Colonel" Tom Allom had engineered the first four Black Sabbath albums and was working for Arnakata Management at the time. With Kernon onboard to engineer the album, Allom was asked to be the producer because of his heavy metal experience:

Upon hearing the quality of the final mixes, the band were so pleased that they decided to release the album worldwide and give Japan a different title and a bonus EP as their souvenir

During the recorded Tokyo shows, Rob had been suffering from partial laryngitis, therefore his vocals weren't up to the standard of their usual shows. So during the mixing session at Ringo's place, a small party of people were in attendance and at one point, Rob was seen out on the patio wearing a set of headphones and singing his vocal lines into a microphone. Word leaked out about the vocals being redone and the rumors grew to the point where it was being reported that all the instruments were redone and the audience was a canned Japanese recording dubbed in. While the rumors were unfounded, it unfortunately prompting critics to call the album 'Unleashed In The Studio' and to this day, many fans are confused about the album's integrity. A rare bootleg of the February 15 show does a lot to prove the authenticity of the performance (Rob's voice only needed minimal repairs and the audience really did have that "canned Japanese" sound) and Priest's guitarists have confirmed that the band's musical parts are legitimately 100% live:

[ezbprimerib]

Unleashed In The East. Great live Priest.

+1

I hate live albums but this one rocks.


Of course I'm biased. JP was one of my favs growing up.

[Cygnus X1]

Great stuff, NV!
Thanks for taking the time to post that.
RSmacker, where are you? Do you have inside information to refute this?

[Bengal]

That vid for Don't Go kicks ass. An excellent example of an early 80's video. You can really tell these guys had no idea what to do or how to do it. But the video came out pretty decent, I think. It makes no sense at all but decent none the less...

Plus KK's lead is friggin' sweet...

[masterofsolos]

Does anyone know what gear they used to record this? was it still Marshalls? I'm assuming they hadn't started using the Rockmans yet (was that Ram it Down or Turbo that they started using those?) but I really dont know.

My favourite album in general (i have it on right now ) and I do love the tone, great screaming lead tones..I've always been curious about what amps they used to record this

[jk2171]

June 4th 1984 - Winnipeg Arena with Great White opening. Sold out 14,000 and change. Fucking awesome. Fantastic record.

My 2nd show ever.....JP with Great White as well in Chicago at the Rosemont Horizon. Unbelievable stage show, memorable to this day. Halford riding out on his Harley after the arm of the Metallion raises up.

Classic album....not a bad song on the whole thing.

[CharvelRocker]

Does anyone know what gear they used to record this? was it still Marshalls? I'm assuming they hadn't started using the Rockmans yet (was that Ram it Down or Turbo that they started using those?) but I really dont know.

My favourite album in general (i have it on right now ) and I do love the tone, great screaming lead tones..I've always been curious about what amps they used to record this

I'm not sure. It sounds to me like while they were still using the Marshalls, some of Glenn's leads sound like he's using a pedal of some kind; Freewheel Burning, Heavy Duty,The Sentinel and Love Bites some to mind. Rock Hard, Ride Free, Some Heads are Gonna Roll, Defenders of the Faith, and Night Comes Down sounds like just the Marshalls, even the leads.

For the record, they were still using their Gibson Vs (KK) and Fender Strats (Glenn) with what I assume were DiMarzio Super Distortions.

On Turbo, Glenn used a Roland G707 Guitar and Roland GR700 synths on a number of the songs. He was using his Custom Hamers, which had EMG pickups in them. I would imagine most of his distortion tones were still from the Marshall, but more heavily processed thanks to the digital recording. On songs like Turbo Lover and Locked In, I would imagine he just used the over drive tones on the GR700. KK used a (aptly named) Boss Turbo Distortion on Turbo and Ram it Down with his EMG and DiMarzio equipped Hamer Vs, still going through the Marshalls. I don't think they got into rack stuff until the Ripper era.

[guitarzan2]

Screaming For Vengence - Great
Defenders of the Faith - Great

Jugulator - The Ultra-Heavy Priest that most people just didn't get.

As much as I love SFV & DOTF, Jugulator is the one that does it for me.

[thebeggar]

Jugulator - The Ultra-Heavy Priest that most people just didn't get.

As much as I love SFV & DOTF, Jugulator is the one that does it for me.

Never heard jugulator. Might have to check it out

[442w30]

Never heard jugulator. Might have to check it out

It's got Timmy on Vocals and has some pretty good tunes.

I think that without Halford's songwriting, the lyrics are pretty juvenile - sort of living off of DOTF and Painkiller themes. I am pretty sure all of the lyrics were penned by Glenn, I love his guitar playing , but he should let someone else write the lyrics.

I really liked a bunch of tunes from Demolition and some off of Jugulator.
Particularly One on One and Subterfuge.

There are a few that are unlistenable and unexcusable - Cyberface comes to mind as the absolute worst lyrics/filler song EVER produced by Judas Priest and sounds like someone got a few computer buzzwords off of the news and tried to write a horror story for 60 year olds that are scared of computers.