Iron Maiden and Judas Priest

[GulDukat]

Might be better to create one thread for both bands as they often get lumped together anyway. Both bands ruled the 80's (and 70's in JP's case), both bands had their lead singer bail in the early 90's and were replaced by unpopular new frontmen, only to come back later, and both bands released sub-par albums in the 90's and made strong comebacks in the 00's.

Iron Maiden- Can't go wrong with anything from their 80's output. Iron Maiden to Seventh Son of a Seventh Son are all fantastic albums. I'm more of a Bruce Dickinson fan, but those first two albums with Paul Di'Anno are awesome too. As far as the post-Dickenson work goes, with Blaze Bailey, I thought that The X Factor had its moments but wasn't really into Virtual XI. As for the post-reunion albums, I thought that they were all good (an improvement over any of their mediocre 90's albums), but those first seven albums are all pretty much flawless classics and they will never be able to top them. Their first reunion album, Brave New World is their best later-day album, IMHO.

Judas Priest- Pretty much all of their albums from Sad Wings of Destiny (their sophomore album) to Defenders of the Faith are great, as was Painkiller (1990), their last with Halford before he left the band. I actually liked the two albums that the band recorded with Tim "Ripper" Owens, but they didn't sound like Judas Priest to me. It's like they abandoned their sound and were a completely different band, sounding more like Slayer than Priest. Whatever you may have thought about the two albums Maiden recorded without Bruce in the 90's, at least they sounded like Maiden. I thought that the three post-Halford reunion albums were all pretty good, but not great.

I also really enjoyed Rob Halford's band Halford. The first one is better than any of the post-reunion albums, IMHO. 2wo was pretty cool too. His early 90's band Fight wasn't bad either.