Music Babble

I'm not going to get into a argument about what counts as hair metal, but I only consider the (bad) late 80s Judas Priest to be hair metal. Curious though, if you think that's hair metal do you think that it's the first hair metal album? It's from 1976. If it counts I don't know what came before it that would also count.

To actually answer your question, rather than say I'm not going to argue and then quasi-argue, I've certainly heard people compare '70s priest to queen. Their next album, Sin After Sin, probably gets mentioned more with the Queen comparison.
I do think Sad Wings is one of their best albums.