Two years on, another Priest album, but this one would stretch the patience of many of their fans as the band decided to go in a more commercial, radio-friendly direction. Again. But this time more in-your-face, with guitar synths and more grounded lyrics. A love/hate album, this one has divided opinion ever since it was released, nearly thirty years ago now.
Turbo (1986)
The title track, as such, gets us underway as “Turbo lover” screams in, but you can already hear the insidious presence of the synthesisers. A hard drumbeat ushers the song in, but those bippy synth lines are already annoying. Halford's voice is more restrained, no screaming so far, nor growling. The song is kind of throwaway, and has a lot of AOR edges around it. It slows down near the end for an almost Meatloafesque choral passage, but does speed up before the end. Even so, it's kind of hard to equate Downing or Tipton's solos here with anything off any of the previous albums. Even
Point of entry had better fretwork than this! Still, we are only one track in so I had better reserve my judgement for now.
“Locked in” has a more uptempo rock feel about it, but I don't really think I could comfortably call it metal. Kind of reminds me of later Tygers material when they went over to the AOR side of things. Okay, there are some very decent guitar solos here, nods back to the glory days of
British steel and albums of that ilk. The synths are back for “Private property”, but they're pushed a little to the background after the opening salvo, and to be fair this has a great chorus and elicits some of the enthusiasm and swagger of previous Priest music. Probably the best track so far. Giving a finger to Tipper Gore and her pathetic PMRC, and echoing Floyd from six years ago Halford roars
”We don't need no parental guidance!” in the song of the same name. It's a fun ride, with some fine solos and an air-punching defiance about it, revenge for the controversy Gore and her self-appointed guardians of morality caused about “Eat me alive”.
Keeping the foot down hard on the throttle, “Rock you all around the world” is a good anthem with some screaming solos, and thankfully not too much if anything of the synthesisers in evidence, but they're very much in evidence for “Out in the cold”, which sounds like it could be a ballad. It's not though. Takes a while to get going, but when it does, it's very much a Foreigneresque mid-paced rocker, but it really does not sound like Priest at all. It does tick a lot of the boxes and it would probably be great on say a Night Ranger album, but I just don't hear Judas Priest in it. Halford's back to his Brian Johnson impression for “Wild nights, hot and crazy days” with certainly plenty of energy and power, but again there's that AOR/slightly Bon Jovi feel to the song that makes it seem like it's not one of theirs. Was it written for them? No, all songs written by the usual crew, so they can't blame an outside songwriter like Bob Halligan Jr for the terrible “(Take these) Chains” on
Screaming for vengeance.
“Hot for love” is another kind of throwaway track, rock-by-the-numbers, very predictable and generic, right down to the guitar solo. There's a decent closer in “Reckless”, but the problem is that there's very little that's memorable on this album. It's all good hard rock, perhaps verging on heavy metal at times, but not enough to justify this as being a Judas Priest album. Something of a disappointment, though not as much as I had been led to believe.
TRACKLISTING
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 and crazy days
8. Hot for love
9. Reckless
Coming hard on the heels of the superb
Defenders of the faith this turns into something of a damp squib. That's not to say it's a bad album, but it's far from a worthy successor to their previous album. Led by music trends and I guess in search of radio airplay and even some more chart success, Rob and the lads decided to turn onto a different path, toning down the futuristic elements in their lyrics and focussing on more down-to-earth themes, but in doing so I think they lost a vital part of what is, or was, quintessentially Judas Priest. Hopefully it wasn't lost forever.
Oh yeah: this was also the album from which one of the tracks was picked to be included on the “Top Gun” soundtrack, but the band blocked its inclusion as they believed the film would be a flop. Hope you didn't bet too much money on
that one, guys!