Judas Priest Killing Machine (180 Gram Vinyl, Download Insert)

To many of their American fans, Judas Priest's fifth album, Hell Bent for Leather, has become synonymous both with the group's adoption of a leather-and-studs wardrobe (a byproduct of singer Rob Halford's then still closeted gay lifestyle) and with crystallizing the more concise and versatile heavy rock songwriting that would be repeatedly polished to a platinum sheen by the early '80s. Funny thing is, Priest fans everywhere but the U.S. felt the very same ways about Priest's Killing Machine LP, which is not at all surprising once one realizes they are in fact the same album, by and large. As the story goes, Columbia Records' U.S. office objected to the original title's violent connotations and insisted on using the far more sexually charged, homoerotic alternative -- making this possibly the first and last occasion in history in which Europe chose violence over sex and America sex over violence, instead of the other way 'round. Anyway, other than the album titles and the addition of P