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It was a surprise running into this book as I didn't think Martin Popoff had written more about Judas Priest since Judas Priest: Heavy Metal Painkillers in 2007 (by now, he's written so many books about music that it's impossible to keep up). Decade of Domination is the first of two books that dig deep into the band's discography, this one covering the band from the beginning all the way to Defenders of the Faith. The first thing that hit me was how packed this book is. It's only 242 pages, including citations, discography, credits, etc., but the actual "meat" is made of densely packed pages for the most part, with the occasional illustrations. Popoff not only provides his own in-depth comments about each song off each album covered in the book, but there's also a lot of interview bits with dozens of people, mostly band members but also producers, engineers, former band members, and, well, just about anyone he could find who was had some involvement with the band during those years.

Things sometimes get a little lengthy, but overall this is a very interesting in-depth take on the band's early-ish career which encompasses some of their most successful albums (musically, commercially, or both, depending...) As usual with Judas Priest, and the author does point that out, the band members are very diplomatic in their comments, so, just like in Heavy Metal Painkillers, there's often that feeling that they're holding back, though I find it's not nearly as bad in this book here, likely because the focus is a lot more on the music itself. This turned out to be an unexpected page-turner and I can't wait to dig into the second book.

Additional Information

First edition published in 2018.