1./2. The Hellion/Electric Eye (****/****) - So I'm combining The Hellion and Electric Eye for the mere fact that The Hellion is only 41 seconds long. It's good music and sets the stage for anything that even resembles awesome but then it transitions to the only great song off of Screaming for Vengeance and that is Electric Eye. It's all about the cyber-menace of an evil satellite that's made of metal and with gleaming circuits. Also, the guitars and vocals here is one of the best performances out of any song they've done. The guitars rise and fall with an amazing amount of grace and could be good evil satellite fighting music if we ever had to fight them. Awesome song and another awesome kick off to this disc.
3. Living After Midnight (****/****) - Another classic track from British Steel that is almost as good as Breaking the Law for it charts the same course: anthemic course, killer riffs and a groove to pump your fist towards. This is party music, put it on and you got a party going...if the party-goers are cool. This song has everything going for it from the pounding drums, the direct guitar lines and the pure fun of the vocals. But a bit of Breaking the Law's brevity would have been nice but that's just nitpicking cause the solo here is a very good one.
4. Freewheel Burning (**1/2/****) - Yes, this is of the Defenders of the Faith album and yes, it starts strong and ends weak. What a shame cause the beginning is amazing car chase music for everything is sped up a notch but not too fast to be inaccessible to anyone. Then comes the solo but amazingly enough it doesn't kill the song for it's pretty awesome. No, after it Halford decides to do speed-metal vocals and he can't quite pull it off, damaging another fine song but unlike Love Bites or Jawbreaker the damage is more severe. I can't even understand what Halford's singing about when he does that type of vocal-style and even when he's ungodly high like on Painkiller, you can still understand what he's saying on. What a shame.
5. Exciter (***/****) - I think this is the first metal messiah that Priest sings about in Exciter. Something comes and he's going to save us by soaring like a comet and making us get down on knees and repent if we please. So they haven't gotten down the creatures like they would master on Painkiller, Night Crawler or The Sentinel but it's a good song nonetheless. It moves at a great pace and Halford has some of his best vocal work from the 70's in being Exciter's mouthpiece. But the shining moment of this comes in at the end of solo where it almost sounds like fanfare. The lyrics are cheesy but earnest and the music does portray the alleged awesomeness of Exciter even if they would do better in the future.
6. The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown) (***/****) - Out of the bands that Judas Priest could and has covered, they covered a Fleetwood Mac song. Now this is early Fleetwood Mac before Stevie Nicks and songs that didn't suck written by Peter Green, who would later turn schizo, so it's not as mind-blowing as it could have been. Now I have listened to the original song and think of it as a pussified Ram it Down so Priest's version is a major improvement by pruning all the fat off of that. But what truly sells the song here is, once again, Halford vocals which is all paranoid and jittery. It's a great performance augmented by some heavy guitars.
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