Released: July 14
Judas Priest don’t have the catalogue of live albums that Iron Maiden has (but then, who does?), yet even so A Touch of Evil racks up their fifth, recorded over the course of their last two world tours. The most immediately noticeable aspect is the album’s brevity: while the other two live documents I've reviewed recently are double CDs clocking over ninety minutes, A Touch of Evil is barely an hour, and that’s with three songs longer than seven minutes apiece. The other thing is the track-listing, an unconventional collection of newer tracks and lesser-known older tunes like "Riding on the Wind" (it's from Screaming for Vengeance) that deliberately omits most of their best known songs. Priest deserve credit for this, because it would have been easy to go the Maiden route and just fill two CDs with hits we’ve all heard thousands of times (this is a band who have also never felt it necessary to do a "heritage" tour either, something else that would have been quite easy for them to do). Even better, while three of these tracks have been on live albums before, none of them were with Rob Halford's vocals. So what this lacks in playing time it makes up for in being essentially a rather unique set.
The great thing about this is that even without all the "hits", Judas Priest has still managed to fill this album with great songs, including some of their truly heaviest moments like "Between the Hammer and the Anvil" and particularly "Dissident Aggressor" which was, for its time, one of the most crushing songs ever. "Death" is arguably the only misfire here, an unweildy behemoth of a track that lacks the energy of "Riding on the Wind" that precedes it and the hooks of "Beyond the Realms of Death" that follows. It was one of the better songs on Nostradamus, true, but that's not saying a lot. Thankfully, the only other song from that album here is "Prophecy". "Painkiller" closes the set, and it's clear that Halford has some problems with his pitch here although most of the time he's great (better, it has to be said, than Dickinson on Flight 666, though to be fair Bruce still moves on stage like a guy half his age and Rob barely moves at all) and the rest of the band cannot be faulted.
A Touch of Evil is a pretty good offering as far as live albums go, especially as it does give some of Priest's lesser-known but still killer tracks an airing. The only realy criticism is that it's so short. Another disc with stuff like "Starbreaker" and "Rapid Fire" on it as well would have been ultra cool.
- Judas Rising
- Hellrider
- Between the Hammer and the Anvil
- Riding on the Wind
- Death
- Beyond the Realms of Death
- Dissident Aggressor
- A Touch of Evil
- Eat Me Alive
- Prophecy
- Painkiller
Rating: 80%
Good review of an album that now seems more interesting than it did when I first heard about it, though for my money, Priest's best live efforts are the ones they did with Ripper.
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