Rating: **
Review Date: 4/27/06
Alternate Title: Judas Priest: Live Vengeance '82 (DVD release)
Cast: Rob Halford, Glenn Tipton, K. K. Downing, Ian Hill, Dave Holland
This concert video from Judas Priest's 1982 "Screaming For Vengeance" tour shows the band on their way to the peak of their career. I would have actually preferred to see the "Defenders Of The Faith" show, which in my opinion was the pinnacle of the band's achievements. Even so, the "Vengeance" tour showcases a wonderful performance and features a killer playlist. Vocalist Rob Halford manages to keep his voice throughout the entire show, but is often off key. This is definitely an improvement over every time I've seen Priest live, where Rob goes hoarse after 4-5 songs. The video also captures how profusely he sweats. Ew... While the performance and the playlist are excellent, the video suffers from numerous production problems. For whatever reason, the director felt compelled to employ numerous video effects that are utterly annoying. They also tend to occur during the most dramatic guitar performances, which drove me crazy. The show was shot on video and has that crappy "shot on video" look, but what's worse is that half of the cameras they used had dirty lenses and/or sensors. This resulted in a lot of unattractive junk in the final output, which is really unfortunate. Overall, if you're a classic metalhead and like classic Judas Priest, this video is definitely worth checking out.