Judas Priest Album Blamed for Suicide Pact

My favorite metal band!!
Judas Priest

35 years ago, the legendary British metal band, who set standards for most metal bands, released their Stained Class album. This would soon be almost destroyed by a hideous tragedy.

In early 1978, when the album was released, the guys in Priest just wanted their career to take off. After making an LP called Rocka Rolla which premiered on the 1976 album Sad Wings of Destiny, Priest had celebrated being taken on by Columbia Records after their Sin After Sin. But it was 'Stained Class' that really got them going.

In addition, they adopted a striking new logo, and futuristic looking cover that would basically redefine metal music and image, along with Rob Halford's leather bondage kink gear with metal studs on it. This album helped to set them apart from another metal band, the aptly named 'Heavy Metal Forefathers' and big brothers, another band from Birmingham, England, Black Sabbath.

One of their songs, "Exciter", could be considered to be the first speed metal song. Their cover version of Spooky Tooth's "Better by You, Better Than Me" was blamed for a gruesome suicide pact that left one man dead and another injured. Distraught, the men's families were severely misled by stupid lawyers who were hell-bent on blaming all of society's problems on heavy metal bands of the 1980s.