Screaming for Vengeance ("Electric Eye")

Judas Priest. "Electric Eye." On Screaming for Vengeance. [CBS] Columbia, BL 38160 / FC 38160, 1982. Song written by Judas Priest's Glenn Tipton, Rob Halford, and K. K. Downing.

The Singer of "Electric Eye" is a space-based unobserved observer—made of metal, with gleaming circuits, an AI perpetually keeping "the country clean" by constant surveillance of everyone; feeding upon our thoughts, the Eye grows in power. Note cover art, conceived by Judas Priest and executed by Doug Johnson: here a mechanical screaming eagle; cf. JP/Johnson cover on Defenders of the Faith (Columbia Records, 1984); cf. and contrast bronzed human(oid) head on Stained Class (design by Roslav Szaybo of CBS Records, photography by Ronald Kass [Columbia, 1978]). The combination of artwork, photography, lyrics, and music in Screaming for Vengeance and Defenders of the Faith produces a very strange amalgam of animal vitality, decadent kinkiness, and mechanization.