Judas Priest - The Chosen Few
by Kevin Wierzbicki
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It's kind of frightening to think that I'm of the same mindset as Ozzy Osbourne but the wizened rock star and I have both declared "The Ripper" to be our favorite Judas Priest song. My fondness for the song has little to do with anything but Ozzy's does; in fact other people's taste in Priest is the whole reason for the existence of The Chosen Few. Each of the seventeen included cuts has been chosen by one of the band's peers and the luminary's reason for picking the song can be found in the notes printed in the CD booklet. James Hetfield of Metallica chose "Victim of Change" because "The many landscapes of the song takes me on an epic journey," Klaus Meine of Scorpions likes "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" because it reminds him of touring with Judas Priest and Lemmy is typically off the wall as he explains why he picked "Breaking the Law" for the compilation. "Motorhead recorded "Breaking the Law" for a Priest tribute album and my father was a priest too! Which proves it only goes to show!" Alice Cooper, Slash, Zakk Wylde, Vinnie Paul and Geezer Butler are among the others who pick favorites here and reading the liner notes provides a little additional fun while the music plays. The big radio hits are present ("Turbo Lover," "Living After Midnight") as are early cuts like the band's cover of Joan Baez's "Diamonds and Rust" and a take on the Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac chestnut "The Green Manalishi (With the Two-Pronged Crown)" but there's nothing new or previously unreleased on hand. If you pop for the older retrospective Metal Works you can get just about everything that's found here and a lot more but for many The Chosen Few will serve as a good career-spanning sampler of the work of these metal titans.
Judas Priest - The Chosen Few
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