Sorry, I don't mean to offend, but I don't count the Ripper albums.
Neither do Priest.
Totally a shame. Demolition is a mess, but Jugulator is just AMAZING. Cathedral Spires is possibly the greatest JP album closer of all time. And Live Meltdown by itself is reason enough to legitimize the Ripper-era. I'm an old school JP fan....but Live Meltdown is my favorite Priest Live album.
But therein is the Priest problem. Now, I'm a huge Maiden fan (first concert ever was Maiden opening for Priest in '82) and compared to them, Priest just comes off a little cartoony. The "Metal God". "Jugulator". What the fuck is a "Jugulator"? Booby fondler? I like Priest - have all their albums except the Ripper ones - but it's a little over the top for me, and despite some great tunes, drops them a notch for me.
Oh come on! How is the Jugulator any different than the Hellion from SFV? Or the character on the front of DOTF? Or the Painkiller? All classic Halford albums...all NO DIFFERENT than the Jugulator.
And all cartoony. I'm not arguing with you but you are in a way making my point.
I outgrew the "METAL ROOLS, EVERYONE ELSE IS FOOLS! DIE FOR METAL MUTHAFUCKAS!" mentality in '84.... wait, I never really HAD that mentality. I get it, love your lifestyle and live it to the fullest, but I kind of got into the touchpoints of Maiden (and Sabbath for that matter) more than I did those of Priest. Their best albums - and the parts of their albums I love the best - were always the parts where they brought it back down to less of a caricature. We DON'T Rock, I DON'T Wanna Rock, and I'm not Defending The Faith. Though I've dated a couple women that could be the subject of "Devil's Child".
It's my one knock on later Sabbath; once someone told Iommi that he was the "RIFFMASTER GENERAL", and all he had to do was pile a couple of monster pieces of riffage together, instead of crafting SONGS like Spiral Architect, their work went down a notch (that's why I like the first two Dio records only, and while I have since gone back and found much to appreciate about Dehumanizer, I dismissed it for years as just a one-note sludge-fest).
No one talks about it much, but it's why I liked Point of Entry so much. Some have called it Rob's "gay" album, and while I'm not gay at all, I thought it was a great exploration - to the extent you can explore the inner feelings of a gay man on a metal record, let's keep SOME perspective - of something REAL, as opposed to "Killing Machines" and what not.