Impact Albums: Judas Priest-Point of Entry(1981)

Hey Folk’s! To keep things interesting round these parts I have decided to start a new series called “Impact Albums” in which I will discuss how an album by an artist/group has resonated with me through years and in some instances decades! Some of these albums I have reviewed but have decided to redo and rewrite them from a different angle.  Course when I started this Blog over Three and a half Years ago I was posting like a lunatic and now over time when I reread some of them it’s like “damn I should have said this in my review” Well here we go….

Summer of 1981 and as per the family protocol we would go camping for a few weeks every summer to a campground called “Sibley Provincial Park’ about an hours drive away from Thunder Bay. Basically there was nothing around  the park as once you were there you were there to stay as my parents would bring enough food/propane/you name it to make us last out there.

Isolated I suppose is the word I’m looking for!

For myself it was loading up on a ton of batteries to make sure my trusty Walkman would survive the ordeal! Vinyl was my deal but knowing I was going to be away from my record collection for two weeks I had to get something new and with that months allowance it came in the form of a cassette copy of Judas Priests “Point of Entry’.

At home I had  Unleashed In The East  the live album from Priest which I had purchased shortly after Priest’s no-show opening for KISS back in October of 1979.

For some goofy reason I never bought 1980’s British Steel until about 5 years after its initial release! Who knows what I was thinking! Clearly I was not thinking but come Summer of 1981 I needed new rock and Point of Entry was going to make or break my two weeks of isolation away from the comfy confines of my home!

Point of Entry was Priest dabbling with a commercial hard rock like sound. It’s basically an exact left turn from the pure Metal Live Sound of 79’s Unleashed!

Songs such as Heading Out To The Highway/Desert Plains perhaps could be classified as Classic Priest of yesteryear but it was songs like Don’t Go/You Say Yes/Hot Rockin/Solar Angels and my personal favourite Turning Circles simplified a change in direction perhaps a more modern rock sound with a tinge of perhaps what was going on in the early 80’s. The production is a fine mix of raw and polish. All of Point of Entry in my book is awesome!

For the hardcore Priest Fan Point of Entry might be the blip on the Metal Radar of Priest as they really ramped up some heaviness on 1982’s brilliant Screaming For Vengeance.  I love Screaming as it could and may be at one point another written post about it by itself but for me if you ask me on any day of the week what my favourite Priest album is it could be Point of Entry or Screaming For Vengeance! Perhaps a coin toss is in order?!

DEke’s Various  Points of Entry through the Decades..

I originally purchased P.O.E on Cassette Summer of 1981. Purchased on vinyl early 1983. Followed that buying it on CD around 1990 or so and finally reacquiring it as a reissue on Vinyl November 2017!