Judas Priest
Firepower

The eighteenth studio album by English heavy metal band Judas Priest. Released in 2018. The album sold around 49,000 copies in the United States within its first week of release, debuting at No. 5 on the Billboard 200 chart, making it the band's highest-charting album in the US.

The Priests return with an awesome album. Sharp guitars, nice mucisianship and a production that sounds perfect.

In their entire history, Judas Priest have not released anything so empty and faceless. This emptiness, however, is a completely natural and regular, completely logical and consistent stage in the development of this group. True, in the direction of degradation. The graduation ended in the time of Tim Owens, after which there was a "return to the roots" in the form of an "Angel", and another return, but in a beautiful symphonic wrapper of "Nostradamus". The latter did not stand out except for this wrapper. And then everything ... The old, largely commercial inertia has dried up, leaving a huge supply of songs and a magical logo, which in the eyes of many people causes a conditioned reflex of deafness and immunity to what you simply don’t want to perceive. And listening to this album, I conclude that the group itself understands this very well. That is why the sound of “Redimer” was deliberately spoiled, so that behind it was somehow less noticeable the secondary and mediocrity of half the material, and that is why Firework really worked hard on the sound, so that in contrast to the previous album, it was temporarily “deaf” under the brain influenced by the magic logo, took the 2018 album as something masterpiece and magnificent. That's just for a really great sound, there is absolutely nothing that deserves such epithets. However, secondary nature, self-plagiarism and boredom can also be praised - this is everyone's personal business. But for all 14 Firepower songs, except for the memories of where I had already heard this melody or this riff, it brought nothing. And thanks for the variety - I remembered the Judas Priest of the 70s, and 80s, and 90s, and further - until the "Redimer". But at the last there was at least something that could not be called secondary. In some places there was energy and dynamics. They are not here. But there is Rob Helford's vocals - oh yes, this is really an indicator, because tuning, mastering, information, and further down the list, are not in nature. So to say “this is JP and they made the album JP” can be adjusted for the fact that this 2018 model JP is listened to exclusively as nostalgic, and there is nothing more about it.

For me, this album is like Sin After Sin - powerful, Haevy, with a brilliant vocal - don't ask me questions... I like Judas Priest - I Recommend

The heavy metal gods are back with a new album. At first hearing, Firepower is not among the best Judas Priest albums but is a very solid and powerful record.