Judas Priest: One Shot At Glory... the best running song ever?

So a mate recently talked me into doing a 10km charity run this July. I’m kind of unfit at the moment and I don’t get many opportunities to break a sweat in my sedentary office job. Well, not unless something goes wrong with our websites... The point being, this run will be the toughest physical challenge I’ve ever attempted and so I’ve been training hard. Apparently once you break 5km, getting to 10km isn’t as relatively difficult. Just need to get to 5km first.

Naturally, I play the music I love when I’m jogging and as it turns out, the classic heavy metal album by Judas Priest, Painkiller, was apparently made specifically for jogging — especially its closing track, One Shot At Glory.

I mentioned the other day how I never quite managed to get into Judas Priest, even though I’ve loved metal for 20 years. Not too long ago that all changed, however, when I acquired a copy of the Painkiller album and finally got to understand what it was all about.

It’s not just the aural expression of power — the themes of glory, defiance and adversity-overcoming magnificence; the shredding riffs; and the inhuman ear-piercing vocals — that make this album and specifically its closing track so perfectly fitting for the strength-sapping and willpower-demanding task that is running a quarter of a marathon.
It’s way more than that. While the entire album is essentially the heavy metal equivalent to Vangelis’ Chariots Of Fire theme or Eye Of The Tiger, it’s the very speed and recording tempo of the closing final track, One Shot At Glory, that clearly makes it a running song.

I’ve been told I’m a tragic nerd when it comes to my music collection because I’ve recorded and written down the track BPMs (beats per minute) on many of my industrial music albums. A mate who once tried to play a DJ set with my CDs complained that he couldn't see the cover artwork due to all the bits of paper with hand-written scrawled numbers slipped into the jewel cases (below). So yes, I’ve spent plenty of lot of time listening to song tempos. I even have an iPhone beatcounter on me. Just in case.

There are people who listen to music. And then there are people who listen to music.

As it turns out, Judas Priest's One Shot At Glory is at the precise constant tempo that also happens to be my personal running tempo sweet spot, around 150bpm in my case.

Now keep in mind that it’s even been scientifically proven — and by “scientifically proven” I mean “I read it on a Cracked.com list” — that music can affect the brain and body in all sorts of crazy and awesome ways. From its ability to supposedly help prevent seizures to improved memory, music can do all sorts of wonderful things. And yes, increased endurance has to be right up there (even if, oddly enough, the indisputable evidence that is a Cracked.com article doesn't explicitly mention this fact, I think it's safe to assume that it's fact anyway, simply based on the virtue of its existing awesomeness).

But wait there’s more…

If the tempo and riffing and cheesy but-oh-so-epic vocals aren’t enough to get you racing, those One Shot At Glory lyrics will surely do it. Like this passage…

Fighting on with dignity
In life and death we deal
The power and the majesty
Amidst the blood and steel
I still hear the battle cry (extra high scream here)
The call goes on and on
I still see the banners fly
The battle's always won

Cheesy beyond belief, yes, but awesomely epic nonetheless. When your body burns energy and your heart rate increases, that energy is diverted to muscles and away from ‘less essential’ jobs like digestion and brain power. That is to say, your mind is less likely to ponder the intellectual merits of corny Judas Priest lyrics.

Moving right along, there’s this increased heart rate -inducing chorus:

One shot at glory
Driving hard and seeing red
Destiny calls me
One night of fire
One shot at glory

I run laps around my local oval and on several occasions I’ve been ready to call it a day, only for this song to come one — where as a direct result I’ve literally managed to push myself further and harder.

Judas Priest: Painkiller is an awesome heavy metal album in its own right. But, rightly or wrongly, there are some out there who don’t quite agree. To that I say: if Painkiller isn’t utterly marvellous because it can literally have a physical effect on one’s body, then what is?

Finally, here’s a dubious ‘fan’ video that steals the music and then lazily
superimposes it over a fight scene from 300. But weirdly enough it works. A bit.

Judas Priest: Painkiller…finally got around to discovering this classic heavy metal album

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve recently been digging up a lot of classic heavy metal albums, particularly from the golden ’80s age of metal. In doing that, late last year I enquired: what is the best starting point for Judas Priest (and am I showing my ignorance or what)? Iron Maiden is the greatest band that ever was (don’t argue the point) and I love traditional heavy metal. Yet I just kind of never got into Judas Priest.

According to my sources, Painkiller was the definitive item in the Judas Priest discography, whereas the Screaming For Vengeance album was the most commercially successful. I promptly Painkiller album and not long after was left with a feeling comparable to “where has this album been all my life”.

I won’t go into excruciating detail about what I think makes the Painkiller album so great or why it’s so fantastically memorable — and so utterly goddamn metaaal! People who have been banging heads to it longer than I have can give you a view that’s better informed than mine, or even one that dissents from the usual praise norm.

That silver bloke on the cover? He’s that Painkiller chap you’ve heard so much about.

Historically, Painkiller was Judas Priest’s glorious 1990 move to heavier, proto-power and speed-ish metal after a couple of albums spent meandering around what was touted as a dated and overly happy or even synthy sound. Many fans nowadays feel it contains some of the best Judas Priest songs ever recorded, or at least some of the most popular, what with several cuts going on to become Judas Priest live staples. Personally, my favourite element on Painkiller is Rob Halford’s soaring operatic voice. It’s genuinely extreme — not because it sounds brutal or guttural (which it totally doesn’t), but because his almost comical high-pitched vocals manage to re-create inhuman sounds that most of us would never even contemplate attempting with our mere mortal vocal cords. Add to the mix the fact that Halford is wailing a dozen tales about, metal, leather, defiance, fire, come uppance and more metal, not to mention the fact that there’s all that other stuff going on, from the tremendously heavy opening drums on the title track to the superbly tight guitarmanship and, and, and… the whole experience is just so goddamn freakin’ METAL.

Painkiller is widely regarded as belonging right up there with classic metal albums. At the risk of getting all academic on the topic, I feel it’s a romanticised embodiment of everything that is great about heavy metal. And I’m a better for finally coming across a copy.

Not bad for an album that’s 23 years old

Heavy metal cat

This photo is from just after Christmas. Every year as the festive season approaches and friends and family inevitably ask what I want for Christmas, the response I give is always the same: gift vouchers from record stores

My birthday is close to Christmas so I often manage to accumulate a critical mass of vouchers — and no, in case you were wondering, I don’t get double the amount of presents. I can (if I’m especially well behaved) get away with combining both days into one 150 per cent above average size gift, but twice the volume would be greedy.

Still, it all makes for what is every music collector’s dream of awesomeness, that being a record store shopping spree.

While my preferred source of vouchers from those who are generous enough to get one (or more) for me is from HeartlandRecords, just outside of the Melbourne CBD, not everyone is able to go there in person, so I often end up with vouchers from elsewhere. In this instance I ended up with $100 in JB Hi Fi vouchers, resulting in the following album haul (read on why the cat's in the shot).

• ·         Judas Priest: Painkiller
• ·         Eizbrecher: Eiszeit
• ·         Devin Townsend Project: Epicloud
• ·         A six-pack of early Motörhead albums (what's not to love about Motörhead?
• ·         Manowar: Hail To England
• ·         Megadeth: Th1rt3en

Heavy metal cat.

As I was laying out the CDs for the pic I managed to snap all of one photo before Patapuss generously decided to ‘help’.

Now he’s a lovely cat and after stretching out and announcing his presence with a meow (he does that) he then decided he’d have a little scent of selected CDs.

I noticed the Devin Townsend Epicloud album received most of his attention, and a little bit also went to the Manowar album.

Just heavy metal.

I pointed this out on a Facebook post and the person who recommend Epicloud to me in the first place remarked that this was evidence of Devin Townsend’s awesomeness. I then pointed out that Patapuss didn’t so much as even touch Dave Mustaine's Megadeth CD.

“Clearly a cat of discrimination and good taste,” was the response.

Ouch!