Metal Messiahs #3: Judas Priest "Sin After Sin"

METAL MESSIAHS #3: JUDAS PRIEST – SIN AFTER SIN
by Buzz Drainpipe, The Discarded I
(“All hail the sermon of steel delivered from the shadow pulpit.”)

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If On Through the Night was the fever dream of leather-clad kids with Marshall stacks, and Under the Blade was glam rock dragged through a sewer and set on fire, then Sin After Sin is where metal put on a cloak, entered the cathedral, and became scripture.

Released in 1977—when punk was spitting, disco was glittering, and rock was still sniffing its own bell-bottoms—Sin After Sin arrived like a thunderclap through stained glass. It wasn’t just an album. It was an inauguration. The blueprint for true heavy metal. All black mass, no filler.

This isn’t metal.
This is metal gospel.

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⚡ The Sound: Ritual + Razorwire

Produced by Roger Glover of Deep Purple (yes, that Roger Glover—sacrificing smoke on the water for fire in the sky), this is the first Judas Priest album to be both mythic and merciless.

Opener “Sinner” stomps like a futuristic war beast—siren guitars, tectonic drums, and Halford’s voice cracking open the heavens. “Dissident Aggressor”? That’s Slayer in prototype form. A blitzkrieg of compression and rage. And that drum assault? Courtesy of Simon Phillips—19 years old and playing like a possessed jazz ninja.

Even the Joan Baez cover ("Diamonds and Rust") is alchemy: the ghost of folk transmuted into cold steel.

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👁 The Aesthetic:

Gone are the hippie trappings of earlier records. Sin After Sin is all obsidian robes, sacred geometry, and unknowable fury. This is where Priest stops hinting and becomes the fully armored specter of heavy metal. The cross is no longer a prop—it’s a weapon.

Halford, that operatic banshee from another dimension, delivers every syllable like it’s carved in obsidian. His screams on this record are ritual acts—sigils in sound.

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☠️ Why It’s Metal Messiah #3:

Because this is where heavy metal becomes self-aware. Because it broke away from blues-rock chains and invented the gallop. Because it baptized its distortion in fire and let the congregation burn.

Because Sin After Sin is not an album—it’s revelation.
And those who hear it… are never quite the same.

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