The early Judas Priest albums

I actually really like Ram it Down (minus Johnny B. Goode). It was my introduction to Priest.

Though my favorites are Sin After Sin and Sad Wings, followed by Screaming For Vengeance.

S.D. wrote:

Lari wrote:

I thought Rocka Rolla was the worst Priest album all the way until Demolition came out.

No way. Ram It Down and Turbo share the credit for that.

Agree.

S.D. wrote:

Lari wrote:

I thought Rocka Rolla was the worst Priest album all the way until Demolition came out.

No way. Ram It Down and Turbo share the credit for that.

Ram it Down, yes. Turbo, no. Those synth guitars aren't all that easy to play. Check out Allan Holdsworth for some crazy work with the instrument. There are some cheesy lyrics on Turbo, but I think the music stood up.

I actually like Ram It Down. Yeah, it's got a pretty heavy cheez layer on it but at the time of its release, I think I was simply relieved that they weren't continuing with the synth leanings of Turbo.

Still 'n' all, when I'm in a Priestly mood nowadays, I tend to reach for Sad Wings, Sin After Sin or Stained Class. Hell, even Jugulator still gets an occasional spin if I'm feeling particularly saucy. I lean on the more underrated/unpopular rec's cuz I've pretty much burnt myself out on their more famous records (i.e. British Steel, Screaming, etc.)

It's not the guitar synths that bother me with Turbo, it's the infantile songwriting.

S.D. wrote:

It's not the guitar synths that bother me with Turbo, it's the infantile songwriting.

"Wild nights! Hot 'n' crazy days!" -- Ugh.

Never understood the hatred for TURBO. It has synth guitars on the S/T track, so what? Everyone was using synth/keyboards in 1986 - Van Halen, Iron Maiden, Ozzy, etc. Helloween even had a "discrete" live keyboard player set up backstage.

Turbo is chock-full with great riffs and awesome guitar solos throughout, and is right up with Defenders of the Faith and Screaming for Vengeance songwriting-wise. Solid album throughout, much better than Ram it Down (which had quite some fillers on it).

If people actually spend one hour of their life and listen to it instead of repeating like parrots what they've read on the net, the popular opinion would have been quite different.

The Turbo tour was my first-ever concert so I have a sentimental attachment to that album.. The bulk of it really hasn't aged well at all but there are still a few decent tracks on it. "Out in the Cold" should still be in their set list today as far as I'm concerned.

stormspell wrote:

If people actually spend one hour of their life and listen to it instead of repeating like parrots what they've read on the net, the popular opinion would have been quite different.

Sorry, but that's just not true. I am a Priest fanatic and have been since I purchased "Stained Class" back in the late 70's. I've heard i"Turbo" hundreds of times and I don't hate it, but it's still one of my least favorite Priest records. It has a handful of songs I like, but overall it's a sterile album, both songwriting and production.

Turbo is easily Priest's worst album. The synth guitars are ridiculously dated sounding and the lyrics are cringe-inducing in their stupidity. There are exactly two good songs on it - Out In The Cold and Reckless. I have listened to Turbo many times in my life and it has sucked since the day it was released, which happens to be the day I bought it. It is a vomitous pile of pablum.

Ram It Down is a half decent album that found Priest trying to recapture some of their signature sound and aggression in the face of the Thrash onslaught. Half of the songs work and the other half are forgettable, but at least it has nothing as horrifying as "Parental Guidance."

Haha ok, I'm not going to argue with you guys. If this is JP's worst song ever, I wish they had more of it, instead of all Demolitions, Juggulators, Nostradamuses, or even Ram it Downs.

stormspell wrote:

Haha ok, I'm not going to argue with you guys. If this is JP's worst song ever, I wish they had more of it, instead of all Demolitions, Juggulators, Nostradamuses, or even Ram it Downs.

See, I like some of Jugulator. Cathedral Spires, Bullet Train and the title track are all prime Priest IMO.

We don't need no, no no no, parental guidance here.

stormspell wrote:

If people actually spend one hour of their life and listen to it instead of repeating like parrots what they've read on the net, the popular opinion would have been quite different.

Sorry man but we didn't have the interweb thingy in 1986 and my opinion of it hasn't changed very much. An album with about one great song , one good song, and the rest merely a bunch of average songs. The clincher (at least for me), was the tour for the album. The performance of the older tunes were "wussified". Matched the album pretty much to a tee. We used to joke that it was the Priest album catered for the Betty's or we called them ZZ Priest for the dancability of most of the songs.

Sorry Ult, my post was mostly in response to Witchfinder's. It just rubbed me wrong saying how outdated the Turbo sound is, and then citing a song which doesn't even have a synths on it and has the same typical JP sound as heard on all other albums from that era...

The lyrics are high-school galore, but this always have been JPs trademark. Lyrics like "Love bites", "Eat Me Alive", "Freewheel Burning", "Pain and Pleasure", "Breaking the Law", etc. will never win a Pulitzer award either, you know.

stormspell wrote:

Sorry Ult, my post was mostly in response to Witchfinder's. It just rubbed me wrong saying how outdated the Turbo sound is, and then citing a song which doesn't even have a synths on it and has the same typical JP sound as heard on all other albums from that era...

The lyrics are high-school galore, but this always have been JPs trademark. Lyrics like "Love bites", "Eat Me Alive", "Freewheel Burning", "Pain and Pleasure", "Breaking the Law", etc. will never win a Pulitzer award either, you know.

I was citing "Parental Guidance" for it's moronic lyrics, not the synth guitars. Judas Priest only dumbed down their lyrics in pursuit of sales beginning with British Steel. They crafted thoughtful and interesting lyrics during the 70s. Now I like dumb lyrics as much as the next metalhead, but Turbo was a blatant attempt at crossing over into pop territory. It's terrible.

Fat Freddy wrote:

I actually like Ram It Down. Yeah, it's got a pretty heavy cheez layer on it but at the time of its release, I think I was simply relieved that they weren't continuing with the synth leanings of Turbo.

Still 'n' all, when I'm in a Priestly mood nowadays, I tend to reach for Sad Wings, Sin After Sin or Stained Class. Hell, even Jugulator still gets an occasional spin if I'm feeling particularly saucy. I lean on the more underrated/unpopular rec's cuz I've pretty much burnt myself out on their more famous records (i.e. British Steel, Screaming, etc.)

I think Jugulator is awesome. Ripper sounds great, the music is insane and pounding and just excellent. I love it all.

ultmetal wrote:

stormspell wrote:

If people actually spend one hour of their life and listen to it instead of repeating like parrots what they've read on the net, the popular opinion would have been quite different.

Sorry, but that's just not true. I am a Priest fanatic and have been since I purchased "Stained Class" back in the late 70's. I've heard i"Turbo" hundreds of times and I don't hate it, but it's still one of my least favorite Priest records. It has a handful of songs I like, but overall it's a sterile album, both songwriting and production.

This.

I for one don't hate Turbo, or think it's shit. I just think the band seriously underachieved with that one. The songs and the overall sound is a disappointment. But I take the positives out of it - whenever I'm in the mood, it's fun to enjoy a few songs of Priest doing synth-guitar party metal. I'm glad they made that album, it's... different.

Demolition however didn't click with me even on that level. It's Priest doing music I cannot enjoy. Industrial metal, even a little nu-metal rap feel to at least one song. Again, I try to take the best out of it - Feed On Me I really think is a good track. But overall the album makes me upset. Maybe even after a decade I still need more distance from it to fully enjoy their experiment with that kind of sound.

No-one ever said Priest was boring. Always experimenting...

If you're looking for the best sounding versions of Rocka-Rolla and Sad Wings of Destiny, try and track down the 2002 Japanese remasters issued by JVC Japan. They sound phenomenal and make the Gull/Koch/Snapper releases sound like crap.



http://www.amazon.com/Sad-Wings-Destiny-Judas-Priest/dp/B00005V2TN

http://www.amazon.com/Rocka-Rolla-Judas-Priest/dp/B00005V2TM/

Fat Freddy wrote:

I prefer their early stuff (say, from the debut up to SCREAMING FOR VENGEANCE) over most of what came afterwards.

this. I am a huge fan of 70's music (even though my impressionable years were in the 80's with 80's heavy metal and thrash) and my favorite Priest is in the 70's. I love Rocka Rolla more now than I did 30 years ago and the trifecta of Sad Wings, Sin After Sin, and Stained Class is one of my top 5 trifectas in rock or metal history.

stormspell wrote:

Haha ok, I'm not going to argue with you guys. If this is JP's worst song ever, I wish they had more of it, instead of all Demolitions, Juggulators, Nostradamuses, or even Ram it Downs.

Turbo is pure gold compared to Jugulator and Demolition.

I did not hate , maybe because my then girlfriend loved it, and she could perform miracles, so I let chose whatever music she felt like listening to. The summer of 1986, this was her tape of choice, and she for the most part hated heavy metal.

God bless that gal for those wild and crazy nights.

Yea 'Turbo' is not a great album but I like it anyway.

I've never really had any issues with Turbo. A lot of people dislike it and I can understand why given that it followed right after albums like Screaming For Vengeance and Defenders of the Faith, both classics even at the time.

The problem I have with Turbo is consistency. Priest were going after the more popular sounds of the time but they didn't fit with those type of bands. The end result is an inconsistent album with some good songs and some rather forgettable songs.

Turbo was planned as a double album: Twin Turbo. The intention was for the album to hold appeal to both a newer and younger fan that had no attachment to Priest's earlier albums but to also appeal to the band's established fan base. It wasn't to be.

My guess is Priest were hard pressed to release an album. Their preceding album, Defenders, was released some 3 years earlier and in the 80s that was an eternity in between albums (matched only by Def Leppard's 4 1/2 yr break between Pyromania and Hysteria).

I think the band felt confident enough with Turbo and probably thought it was a fitting time to capitalise on the younger audience that was more familiar with the likes of Dokken than Priest's late 70s early 80s albums or similar bands like Saxon etc. (heck even Saxon did it with Rock the Ages and Destiny).

Commercially speaking, that strategy paid off in a way. Turbo sold in excess of 3.8 million copies worldwide. It did not outsell Screaming for Vengeance (otherwise we would probably have a deluxe special edition of Turbo now instead...) but it sold far more copies than the likes of British Steel, Point of Entry, and possibly even Defenders combined. Also, if you watch the Electric Eye dvd you will see that many in the audience were too young to have witnessed Priest's rise to stardom or even the earlier tours that preceded Turbo.

All in all, Turbo is part of Priest's legacy. Some say this album sounds dated, I don't disagree but I also don't see it as a bad thing. It is a snapshot of Priest's sound and style of the mid 80s. Maybe my feelings towards Turbo may have been more negative had it not been overshadowed by Painkiller - that album just made up for the lackluster of both Turbo and Ram it Down and proved to be the spiritual successor to Priest's early 80s albums.

I don't think the song writing is much different on Turbo than it is on any of the other Priest albums. The use of synth guitars and nickelodeon lyrics proved to be too much for the Breaking the law crowd. I'm not saying Turbo was a great album, just that it wasn't as bad as some folks say it is. I will agree that Priest was trying very hard to get that "we're not gonna take it" level of commercial success.

Alex Dee Rokket wrote:

I've never really had any issues with Turbo. A lot of people dislike it and I can understand why given that it followed right after albums like Screaming For Vengeance and Defenders of the Faith, both classics even at the time.

The problem I have with Turbo is consistency. Priest were going after the more popular sounds of the time but they didn't fit with those type of bands. The end result is an inconsistent album with some good songs and some rather forgettable songs.

Turbo was planned as a double album: Twin Turbo. The intention was for the album to hold appeal to both a newer and younger fan that had no attachment to Priest's earlier albums but to also appeal to the band's established fan base. It wasn't to be.

My guess is Priest were hard pressed to release an album. Their preceding album, Defenders, was released some 3 years earlier and in the 80s that was an eternity in between albums (matched only by Def Leppard's 4 1/2 yr break between Pyromania and Hysteria).

I think the band felt confident enough with Turbo and probably thought it was a fitting time to capitalise on the younger audience that was more familiar with the likes of Dokken than Priest's late 70s early 80s albums or similar bands like Saxon etc. (heck even Saxon did it with Rock the Ages and Destiny).

Commercially speaking, that strategy paid off in a way. Turbo sold in excess of 3.8 million copies worldwide. It did not outsell Screaming for Vengeance (otherwise we would probably have a deluxe special edition of Turbo now instead...) but it sold far more copies than the likes of British Steel, Point of Entry, and possibly even Defenders combined. Also, if you watch the Electric Eye dvd you will see that many in the audience were too young to have witnessed Priest's rise to stardom or even the earlier tours that preceded Turbo.

All in all, Turbo is part of Priest's legacy. Some say this album sounds dated, I don't disagree but I also don't see it as a bad thing. It is a snapshot of Priest's sound and style of the mid 80s. Maybe my feelings towards Turbo may have been more negative had it not been overshadowed by Painkiller - that album just made up for the lackluster of both Turbo and Ram it Down and proved to be the spiritual successor to Priest's early 80s albums.

Turbo was released in mid-April of 1986 and Defenders came out in late January of 1984, that's a two year gap. I am not sure where you are getting this three year thing. Of course it sold well, it was a crass commercial sell-out of the highest order. However, Screaming For Vengeance sold far more than Turbo, and it made no concessions to a pop audience. Defenders was the same way. They certainly could have continued on in this fashion but chose not to. Thankfully, the Twin Turbo idea was never realized and they were forced to use some of the leftovers on Ram It Down as they scrambled to distance themselves from the Turbo sound.

The problem with Turbo is it's a stupid album from a band that's anything but stupid. What happened to the musical complexity and lyrical depth of a song like "Beyond The Realms of Death" or "Starbreaker?" I appreciate that a band needs to get paid, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that this is anything other than garbage.

Quote :

The problem with Turbo is it's a stupid album from a band that's anything but stupid. What happened to the musical complexity and lyrical depth of a song like "Beyond The Realms of Death" or "Starbreaker?"

A valid point but the same could be said about "Painkiller". Heavy for the sake of heaviness. I'd much rather listen to RID or Turbo over Painkiller.