Rock-a-Rama

JUDAS PRIEST, Invisible Shield
As Invisible Shield is Judas Priest’s 19th album, there was some effort put into writing this review as a play on Steely Dan’s “Hey 19.” I got as far as “Way back when in ’69... something something/Sweet things from Birmingham/ So young and willing” before I realized it wasn’t going to happen. Outside of an absurdly high level of technical proficiency, the fact that—like Donald Fagen—Rob Halford is a major dude looking to tell you about the demons at the door, and a talent for shameless melody (if Halford doesn’t own a copy of Aja, I’ll eat my leather cap), the two bands don’t have a ton in common. Well, actually, what the two bands do have in common is almost impossibly rare; both bands have gone half a century without embarrassing themselves. And both bands have done so by dint of talent, guitar lines so bright a cat could nap under ’em, an ineffable charisma, and a wholesale incapacity for embarrassment. Invisible Shield constitutes another notch for Priest (in all those aspects). Glenn Tipton’s solos still sound like plucked silk. Scott Travis still plays with a tasteful restraint that serves the songs in a way that belies the faint praise of calling a metal drummer “tasteful.” Halford still sings like Broadway Sweeney Todd’s razors. And, with “Giants in the Sky” following “Sons of Thunder” and “Escape From Reality,” the band still writes songs that could work just as easily as Dungeons & Dragons modules. (“Hey 19/That’s a dragon.” Sorry. Had to try one more time.)

METH MATH, Chupetones
We here at CREEM don’t write much about hyper-pop, for the same reason we don’t talk much about pop-pop; we respect our lane and don’t have any particular need to get death threats or be called “bestie” on social media by 26-year-old sociopaths. So, in writing about a disco/ not disco/reggaeton/not reggaeton band like Meth Math (because we think they’re super weird and fun), we do so in a context that we and our audience can grok. So, when we say Angel Ballesteros—the anarcho-sprite frontperson (accompanied by producers Error.Error AKA Efren Coronado and Bonsai Babies AKA To Robles) of Meth Math—sounds like an autotuned Allison Shaw, we’re not under any delusion that Shaw’s chamber-goth outfit, Cranes, is big with the Mexican alt-dembow set. We’re just saying that—as documented by some books we skimmed when we were 16—there is a continuum. There are strands of interdimensional pop-gothic-electronic energy that leap from bat cave to dance floor, wherever the kids are borderline excruciating on hard drugs and eyeliner. From the Gang of Four, 100 gees bloom. From Bad Bunny, a Bunnicula shall rise. It’s not an exact science. We’re just saying that, way back in 1994, when the Cranes’ singer squeaked out the lines, “And the sun casts a shadow on the clouds/And I’m dreaming...where am I? Where am I,” that call went out, like a techno-faerie Betty Boop riding on gossamer cyber-wings. And, 20 years later, in Mexico City, some similarly goth-minded freak-futurists answered with, “La playa, me meo/La arena, el cielo/Flotando, el pelo.”