Demolition (Judas Priest Album)

Demolition (Judas Priest Album)

Demolition is British heavy metal band Judas Priest's fourteenth studio album, and the first in the decade of the 2000s. It is the second and final studio album to feature Tim 'Ripper' Owens on vocals, and also one of the few albums to feature a Parental Advisory label. Following the lukewarm-to-decent reception to Jugulator, the band scrambled to assess what exactly went wrong and determined that fans preferred a sound more faithful to Priest's back catalogue. The resulting album would be an amalgam of Jugulator-style riffs, references to 80s Priest, and sporadic nu-metal additions such as quasi-rapping, samples, and industrial-style beats. While the ostensible aim was to offer something for every possible fan, in the end, the album received a much poorer reception than Jugulator by most fans and would result in the eventual reunion of the classic lineup. Owens claimed that Demolition was his favorite album that he did with the group, claiming it had "better vocals and more melody."

The songs "Machine Man" and "Feed on Me" were included in Judas Priest's box set Metalogy.

The album was produced by guitarist Glenn Tipton, who also took over as the primary songwriter with this album. For a long time, the band's main songwriting team had consisted of Rob Halford, K.K. Downing and Tipton. However, after Halford departed from the band, Downing and Tipton went on to write all the songs on Jugulator. On this album, many of the songs were written solely by Tipton, with contributions from Downing on several songs. Former producer Chris Tsangarides, who co-wrote the song "A Touch of Evil" on the Painkiller album, also assisted Tipton in the writing of a few songs. Even drummer Scott Travis co-wrote the track "Cyberface", marking his first and only contribution to songwriting in the band's history (former drummer Les Binks was the only other Judas Priest drummer to co-write a song). This was also the first album since Painkiller to feature a guest appearance by keyboardist Don Airey, who had previously played on "A Touch of Evil".