Judas Priest - Painkiller

What this video is

Released in September 1990 alongside the *Painkiller* album — Judas Priest's twelfth studio LP and a landmark of speed metal — this video arrived at a charged cultural moment. The band had just been acquitted in a highly publicised subliminal-messages civil trial, and the album represented a defiant artistic rebirth, introducing drummer Scott Travis whose double-kick technique pushed the band into technical speed…

Why it matters

A definitive artifact of speed metal's early-1990s peak, 'Painkiller' is widely regarded as one of Judas Priest's greatest songs and one of the most technically demanding metal tracks of its era. The video's hyper-edited, black-and-white visual language became a benchmark for metal production…

The director

Wayne Isham (born December 2, 1958, Vinita, Oklahoma) is an American music video and film director with over 200 credited projects. A UC Santa Barbara alumnus, he cited David Bowie's 'Ashes to Ashes' as his career inspiration. By the early 1990s he was the…