Up here in space, I’m looking down on you
My lasers trace everything you do
You think you’ve private lives, think nothing of the kind
There is no true escape, I’m watching all the time

I’m made of metal, my circuits gleam
I am perpetual
I keep the country clean…

Not to get all Rockwell on you, but you ever get that unnerving sensation that someone is watching you? And I mean really watching you. Not like your garden variety security camera or nosy neighbor with an overzealous Ring obsession.

Not even that sketchy guy at Publix checking out your rotisserie chicken. Yes it is Lemon Pepper and no and I’m not going to sit and eat the entire thing in one go in my car during my lunch break whilst weeping incessantly to Concrete Blonde on shuffle. Again.

No, I’m talking the big leagues here. The biggest of leagues, actually. This is the All-Seeing-Eye. Apropos of everything, this is the cold, unblinking, remonstrative electric glare of the State.

Enter Electric Eye by Judas Priest.

Before we even get there, The Hellion intro swoops in on steel wings. A brief instrumental overture, sure, but it isn’t just a prelude. It’s the predator’s shadow falling across you as you’re marked for observation and surveillance. A mechanical angel descending to designate you a threat.

Then Electric Eye locks in.

When Priest dropped Screaming for Vengeance in 1982, this opening one-two punch cranked the fear of surveillance into a molten metal prophecy. Metal God Rob Halford’s voice declares itself as bleeding-edge observation software in leather and a Harley. That metallic shriek feels like the sky collapsing in on your freedoms while the government smugly takes notice. Absolute sinister perfection.

Electric Eye is what happens when Big Brother discovers power chords. Slicing and scanning with pinpoint menace, there is neither anonymity nor safety. All actions monitored, all sins catalogued, all privacy dissolved into digital quanta.

Man! I sounded a little like Ned Beatty in Network there. When he delivers that epic boardroom speech to Peter Finch? Now there’s a movie that was always five steps ahead of us… but I digress.

Halloween spookiness comes in many forms, but there’s nothing more chilling than authority dictating your individuality. Deciding what you are allowed to be, act, and think, and determining exactly when and how you’ll be punished for forgetting your designated role.

Electric Eye is the modern boogeyman, a digital moral enforcement platform with a gun, a gavel, a noose…. and no heartbeat driving it. Just an algorithm targeting the unclean and undesirable. And Judas Priest rocks that dread like nobody else.

Sleep tight.

There’s nothing you can do about it
Develop and expose
I feed upon your every thought
And so my power grows
I’m made of metal, my circuits gleam
I am perpetual, I keep the country clean

I’m elected electric spy
I’m protected electric eye…