AC/DC aren't elegant, they're primal. Iron Maiden aren't elegant, they're cluttered and overblown. Saxon aren't elegant, they are endearingly simplistic.
Priest are elegant because their music is mean, lean and honed, sleek, metal-ish gleaming, streamlined as in good German engineering. There is no fluff or fat to their arrangements, yet they are not without sophistication. It's well-designed music in much the same way that BMW builds well-designed cars.
It's a quality that I also find and like in Deep Purple - it's no coincidence I love both bands. If you listen to Machine Head there is something functionally precise and naked to the music which appeals to me. If you listen to Led Zeppelin IV, the music is meandering and embalmed in this huge atmospheric production - I find that pretentious and irritatingly unfocused.
Judas Priest sounds like this to me:
Iron Maiden like this:
