Judas Priest

It took several years of line up changes and poorly received album releases before Judas Priest developed their signature sound, with the 1977 album "Sin After Sin" establishing the band internationally through their dual lead guitar attack, punishing pace and driving riffs which went on to define the evolving sound of metal.

The classic line up consists of vocalist Rob Halford, guitarists K.K. Downing and Glenn Tipton and bassist Ian Hill. The 1980 album "British Steel" featured the hits "Breaking the Law" and "Living After Midnight" which garnered Judas Priest mainstream success. Their penchant for wearing leather and chains popularised this fashion statement in metal, influencing acts for years to come.

"Screaming for Vengeance (1982)" peaked at number 17 in the American charts, selling over a million copies, with the band being at the peek of their popularity, achieving great success with the renowned hit "You've Got Another Thing Comin'." The musical style is full of aggressive, fast paced guitar riffs and they also popularised the use of double bass drums, making for rapid rhythms. Their music helped influence the development of thrash metal, which was the next big sub-genre of metal to grow, with bands like Metallica and Megadeath pushing the speed and ferocity of their music to new extreme levels.

Judas Priest's career was hit by controversy, following an incident involving two American teenagers who, having been listening to Judas Priest and drinking beers, decided to make a suicide pact. Judas Priest were deemed responsible for their self-inflicted gunshot wounds due to supposed subliminal messaging that was featured in their song "Better By You, Better Than Me." This incident resulted in a civil action suit that lasted for a month before eventually being dismissed by the judge. The trial became the subject of a 1991 documentary titled "Dream Deceivers: The Story Behind James Vance vs Judas Priest."

After an eleven year break, Judas Priest reunited in 2003 and have continued touring and releasing albums since. They were inducted into the VH1 Rock Honors in 2006, as well as being awarded with the title of the second "greatest metal band of all time," with Black Sabbath taking the number one spot. More recently, the band have released their album "Redeemer of Souls," which has spurred an international tour in support of its release, achieving the band's first top 10 album in the US.

Brothers, Ryan and Joel O’Keeffe, came together to form a band in 2003 and recruited David Roads and Adam Jacobson. They worked at the Hotel Warrnambool and would bring their instruments to work so that after their shifts they could jam out song ideas. They went on to win a competition, called Push-On in Melbourne. It was their self-funded eight track EP entitled “Ready to Rock” that appeared in July 2004, that fell into the hands of Capitol Records whom they signed a five album record deal with.

It was a journey to the US for the band to work on their debut studio album, “Runnin’ Wild” with Bob Marlette who had produced albums with Ozzy Osbourne and Alice Cooper. The album was released in Australia on June 23rd 2007, and they released three singles from the album; “Runnin’ Wild”, “Too Much Too Young Too Fast” which featured on Guitar Hero; World Tour and “Diamond in the Rough”. The album made it to the top 30 of the ARIA Albums Chart in Australia, and even managed to chart in Austria, Switzerland and France. Nearing the end of 2007, they supported Kid Rock and Korn and at the start of 2008, they moved permanently to the US. Their album by this point had charted on the UK Albums Chart, and on the Billboard 200.

At the beginning of 2009, Airbourne headed back into the studio to record their sophomore album “No Guts. No Glory”. It was later released on March 8th 2010. The song “Born to Kill” was played on BBC Radio 1’s Rock Show. It reached the top 20 on the ARIA Albums Chart, and also in five other countries. They were fortunate enough to support Iron Maiden on their Final Frontier World Tour from July 20th to August 1st 2011. The band announced in November 2011 that they had been working on a new album. That album would be called “Black Dog Barking” and would go on to reach to top forty of ten countries.