Iron Maiden was the leader of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal in the early eighties, but Judas Priest was a close second, and in a lot of ways they were faster, edgier and more technically gifted than their rivals. Glenn Tipton and KK Downing are among metal’s finest pair of guitar heroes, and their blistering fretworks deserve to be recognized and studied. Whether in the eighties (British Steel) or the nineties (Painkiller), they definitely were a force to be reckoned with.