First Album Review: ‘Rocka Rolla’ by Judas Priest

My review of the band’s debut album from 1974

I first became aware of Judas Priest when I was a teenager in the early 1980s. Even though they’d already been around for several years by then, the early ’80s was when the band started to reach a wider audience than ever before, due mainly to their internationally successful songs “Breaking The Law,” “Heading Out To The Highway” and “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’.”

Even though I enjoyed each of those songs when they first became popular, I never went out of my way back then to listen to anything else by Judas Priest. I’m not sure why that was, but maybe it was due to their ‘leather-clad/biker-looking’ image. In the early 1980s, I was far more interested in dressing like and becoming Adam Ant and Duran Duran than I was in dressing like and becoming a biker.

Also, even though I liked some of Judas Priest’s music, I was just a kid back then and they probably scared me a little bit.

As the years passed, I’d continue to enjoy their songs when I heard them on the radio, but I remained unfamiliar with the majority of their music. I didn’t end up listening to a Judas Priest album in its entirety until I heard their 2014 album Redeemer of Souls. I ended up liking it far more than I expected, but I didn’t listen to any more of their albums.

Until last week, that is.

I was searching for debut albums to listen to and review for First Album Reviews and my friend Paul Combs suddenly popped into my head. Well, he didn’t really pop into my head. He’s not a genie or anything like that (as far as I know.)

If you’re not familiar with Paul, he’s a writer and music lover and his articles about music are fantastic. In the last several months, I noticed that he frequently wrote about his love for the music of Judas Priest. That’s what popped into my head.

Since Paul and I seem to agree on a lot of things musically, I decided to find Judas Priest’s debut album and give it a listen.

That album, Rocka Rolla, was released in 1974. The original album cover for it is shown in the image at the top of this article. However, the album was later reissued with the cover seen below.

While researching the history of Rocka Rolla, I discovered that many die-hard Judas Priest fans don’t actually like the album— primarily because the band’s sound then was quite a bit different than what came later from them. Even though Judas Priest rocked hard at times on their debut, their rocking was somewhat more subdued back then.

Actually, I’m not sure if ‘subdued’ was the best word to use there. Maybe I should have just stuck with ‘different,’ as I used earlier.

For example, check out “One For The Road,” which is the opening song on Rocka Rolla:

It definitely rocks, but it sounds a lot different from how Judas Priest sounded later when they became superstars. To me, the band sort of sounded like Black Sabbath on this song.

On a very related and no-so-coincidental note, the Rocka Rolla album was produced by Rodger Bain — who just so happened to be the producer of Black Sabbath’s first three albums.

“One For The Road,” in my opinion, was a perfect song to start the album with. It’s a great rocking song and it’s one of my favorites on Rock Rolla.

I’ve listened to this album several times now and I’ve been enjoying it a lot. Maybe since I went into Rocka Rolla without a deep knowledge of the later music Judas Priest is best known for, I was able to listen to it more objectively than others who fell in love with their later albums before they began to explore the band’s earliest recordings.

Who knows? All I know is that I like it.

Here are four of my other favorite songs from Rocka Rolla:

Rocka Rolla

The title cut of the album is an awesome rocker that features exceptional guitar playing and a very catchy chorus.

Winter/Deep Freeze/Winter Retreat/Cheater

In different pressings of this album, these four short pieces of music have been both listed individually as separate songs, and listed (as I’ve done here) as all of them being one “suite” of songs.

Regardless of how they’re labeled, they all add up to almost 10 minutes of great music! My favorite part of it is the rocking “Cheater” section, which features some very good harmonica playing by singer Rob Halford.

Run Of The Mill

Clocking in at 8 minutes and 33 seconds, this is one of the longest songs Judas Priest has ever recorded. The song was written shortly after singer Rob Halford joined the band, with the idea being to write a song that would give him a good chance to let audiences hear his very unique vocal range.

While Halford’s voice sounds fantastic on it, my favorite part of it is the long instrumental jam section toward the middle of the song.

Dying To Meet You/Hero Hero

The first part of this song is a great slow rocker, but when the “Hero Hero” section begins at around the 3:50 mark, the music speeds up and Judas Priest start rocking a lot harder. There’s a very nice mixture of different types of rock music in this song.

All in all, I think Rocka Rolla is an outstanding album. Though it’s not perfect, there isn’t a single song I feel the need to skip over when I listen to the album.

Out of 5 possible stars, I give it…4 stars!

This album is #61 in a challenge I’ve been doing this year called ‘100 New-To-Me Albums in 2022.’ As you might guess from that title, my goal for the year was to listen to at least 100 albums, new or old, that I’d never heard before.

It’s been a very fun challenge and I’ve discovered a lot of fantastic music! If you’d like to see what I’ve listened to so far for it, please check out my Master List below:

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