Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Judas Priest
Label: Sony Music
Release: 2016
Length: 41:10 (the "Turbo" album) // 101:45 (the concert on the two bonus CDs)
Rating: 4.5/5
At the end of last year, thirty years after its original release, the classic Judas Priest album »Turbo« got reissued. It’s the so-called ugly duckling in the huge discography racked up over a long career by this legendary English band, formed in Birmingham in 1969 and a pioneer in many ways of what metal looks like today.
The »Turbo« album itself already got a review on our pages more than a decade ago. You can read it in full HERE. So we won’t go digging into the album’s backstory and making-of this time around.
It’s well known that after the hugely successful tour for the excellent »Defenders of the Faith« (1984), still considered one of the best records of the band’s career, Judas Priest itched for a bigger excursion into the world of experimental sonic adventures. Audacity had always been part of the Judas Priest package, and from album to album they kept taking successful steps in bold sonic and stylistic transformation. This time around, though, the move didn’t exactly pay off on »Turbo«. This was the era when synthesizers flooded commercial music and slowly ate their way into AOR and hard rock, and that fad wasn’t about to skip metal or what it looked like back then either. Thrash metal was young and thriving, the NWOBHM movement was down to a smoldering ember, the titans of Iron Maiden were still standing while Metallica slowly caught up with them and then overtook them, death metal and black metal were in labor pains, and thankfully nobody was thinking about folk metal yet As for the synth experiments in metal back then, it’s no secret anymore that Iron Maiden came out of it far and away the best, drifting the least from their raw sound when their outstanding, unforgettable »Somewhere In Time« came out in 1986. Saxon, on the verge of getting dumped by EMI, were frantically (and unsuccessfully) trying one last time to crack the American market with the sugar-coated, AOR-flavored »Destiny«, which buckled under the weight of its synths. Judas Priest, by comparison, seemed pretty carefree. They’d conquered America ages ago, so “Turbo” is a hugely commercial album, sure, but overall definitely the absolute oddball of the whole galaxy. Sadly, the synths are at times arranged in a pretty stiff, clunky way and clash with the elementary metal distortion, so with »Turbo« Judas Priest have a hard time justifying their hard-earned credibility, fame and lofty price tag once you look back at their predecessors and unforgettable achievements, the biggest highlights being »Screaming For Vengeance« (1982), »Defenders of the Faith« (1984) and/or »British Steel« (1980).
That squashed, compressed synth sound crept into the guitar phrases. In the opener Turbo Lover it’s not much of a problem, but it spoils things a bit later, especially in the rather awkwardly placed, dry intro of the ballad Out in the Cold, which is otherwise one of the album’s compositional peaks. »Turbo« does have a few strong songwriting moments. Those are: Turbo Lover, Locked In, the already mentioned Out in the Cold and the closer Reckless, which the film industry bigwigs tried in vain to get the band to hand over for the soundtrack of »Top Gun«. Had Judas Priest agreed, the song couldn’t have been used on »Turbo« later. Instead, the excellent Cheap Trick song Mighty Wings ended up on the »Top Gun« soundtrack. Among the better moments on »Turbo«, Hot For Love is just about acceptable too.
The weaker moments, compositionally, are: Parental Guidance, Private Property, Rock You All Around the World and Wild Nights, Hot & Crazy Days. With the pretty daft lyrics these songs come with (Judas Priest were never exactly known as razor-sharp poets), the band “drags” itself heavily toward a »party time« moment, but there was plenty of that already on the softer »Point of Entry« (1981), so this time it just doesn’t catch fire. The digital coldness of the production, a total sonic alienation from metal, is amplified even more by the drum machine, which takes center stage in the songwriting. Drummer Dave Holland played the role of a complete extra this time, and a similar fate awaited him in 1988, when Judas Priest released “Ram It Down”. But that’s another story. The rhythms on “Turbo” are one-dimensional, transitions are rare if they exist at all, and dance steps on »Turbo« are easily replaced by »headbanging«, which is what metalheads wrongly and vainly counted on when this album came out in 1986. In short, today this album would get three stars out of five on RockLine. The remastered version of this reissue doesn’t bring any notable sonic differences either when you compare it to the remaster of the album’s 2002 reissue.
So what’s the real gain of the expanded, newly remastered and reissued version of »Turbo«? Not hard to guess. It’s the two extra CDs with an entire concert captured from that leg of the world tour through the USA, when Judas Priest played Kansas City’s Kemper Arena. It’s a snapshot from the same tour (“Fuel For Life World Tour”) that gave us the official live album »Priest.. Live!«., released in 1987. Since the vinyl format of the time imposed time limits, »Priest… Live!« was cut down and adapted. So it never came out in one piece, from head to toe. Only its 2002 remaster served up a few extra songs that Judas Priest played on that tour. The recording from Kemper Arena in Kansas City is a surprise, not just for its divinely polished sound, whose predatory “roughness” gives you goosebumps right away, but already for the set list. Song number two isn’t Heading Out to the Highway but the excellent Locked In, which is missing from »Priest… Live!«. The buyer of the new version gets rewarded further on too, when you work your way to one of the best moments of the »Point of Entry« album, the song Desert Plains, while the crown jewel of this document is the rendition of the »Sad Wings of Destiny« (1976) classic Victim of Changes. Flawless execution. The question is how much Judas Priest »ironed out« the sound before releasing this live document, since it’s well known they always loved doing that, and went seriously overboard with it. Halford holds up decently on vocals through the show. But you can already feel on these recordings that the transfer of vocal power was wearing on him. Halford liked to sing mostly from the throat, and at full power his voice becomes noticeably strained and nasal as he moves from the middle to the higher register (the verse of Some Heads Are Gonna Roll). Here and there he also »wobbles« and gets »carried away« from the ideal position for holding the lead vocal lines. In plain English, that means mild vocal »slip-ups« sneak onto this document, though they’re not as pronounced as on the bonus concert of the expanded reissue of the »Defenders of the Faith« album, which also came out again for its 30th anniversary in 2015.
So, in short. If you’re a Judas Priest fan, you won’t spend a second weighing whether this document is worth buying or not. Even if you’ve had the »Turbo« album in your collection of favorites for ages, and even if you’re not its die-hard fan, the »Turbo 30« version is worth reaching for, and for a very simple reason. Waiting for you on it (on both bonus discs) is an outstanding live document that upgrades the official live release »Priest… Live!« in many ways and overshadows it without breaking a sweat. The difference is so big that you’ll forget about »Priest.. Live!« pretty quickly.
And “Turbo”? Despite all the pronounced sonic experimenting it went through, it remains a Judas Priest classic. Warts and all. If you’re going into this album for the very first time in your life, or you’re not hung up on the “purism” of eighties metal retro-sound, “Turbo” will no doubt fascinate you and reward you richly.
Judas Priest – Locked In (“Live at the Kemper Arena, Kansas City” ):
Lineup
Rob Halford – vocals
K.K. Downing – guitar
Glenn Tipton – guitar
Ian Hill – bass guitar
Dave Holland – drums
Production
Tom Allom
Track list
CD 1.: “Turbo” (remastered version of the original album):
1. Turbo Lover
2. Locked In
3. Private Property
4. Parental Guidance
5. Rock You All Around The World
6. Out In The Cold
7. Wild Nights, Hot & Crazy Days
8. Hot For Love
9. Reckless
CD 2.: “Live at the Kemper Arena, Kansas City”
1. Out In the Cold
2. Locked In
3. Heading Out To The Highway
4. Metal Gods
5. Breaking The Law
6. Love Bites
7. Some Heads Are Gonna Roll
8. The Sentinel
9. Private Property
10. Desert Plains
11. Rock You All Around The World
CD 3.: “Live at the Kemper Arena, Kansas City”
1. The Hellion
2. Electric Eye
3. Turbo Lover
4. Freewheel Burning
5. Victim Of Changes
6. The Green Manalishi (With The Two -Pronged Crown)
7. Living After Midnight
8. You’ve Got Another Thing Coming
9. Hell Bent For Leather
