Judas Priest's Reviews
Turbo (Average Rating: 5.88 out of 10)
An Oddball Priest CD - Not Bad but Very Dated (Rated this album with 6 out of 10)
Reviewed by
Kyle Vraa
from Circle Pines, MN United States
'Turbo' is Judas Priest's take on hair metal. The record has major label meddling written all over it. From the publicity photos of K.K. Downing with a perm that verges on an albino-Afro look and Dave Holland in his Michael Jackson get-up to the actual songs themselves with titles such as 'Wild Nights, Hot and Crazy Days', the cynical label bandwagon hopping just screams out.Here is a bit of history, that I witnessed and was a part of: When Turbo came out in 1986, metal had begun to split into two broad categories of metal: pop/hair metal (Ratt, Warrant, Bon Jovi, Poison, etc.) and thrash metal (Metallica, Slayer, Testament, Megadeth, etc.). Both branches of this fork grew out of traditional metal represented by Judas Priest, the Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Dio and others. But eventually most traditional bands were forced to move in one direction or the other. So Priest placed their chips on hair metal and won big upfront but severely damaged them over the long-term. The market for hair metal was very large in the mid-80s and Turbo went at least platinum (I have heard double platinum from reliable sources) but fan dedication to the genre turned out to be a mile wide and an inch deep. By 1990, hair metal was sputtering on fumes and ultimately became nothing more than a period fad that would be ridiculed much like the disco of the late 1970s. On the other hand, thrash metal survives in various mutations to this very day. In the context of hair metal, Turbo is not a bad record. 'Turbo Lover' is a good song, 'Reckless' even gets close to sounding like traditional Priest. 'Out in the Cold' is enjoyable for the most part but the synth intro sounds like the number the nerds played at the pep fest in "Revenge of the Nerds". The misunderstood-teen theme of 'Parental Guidance' was obviously inspired by Twisted Sister's 'We're Not Gonna Take It' but is not nearly as catchy or enjoyable. Men of Judas Priest's age (nearing 40 at that time) have no business singing teen rebellion anthems anyway. 'Parental Guidance' has to be the all-time low mark for silliness in Judas Priest lyrics (it gets stiff competition from Jugulator and Demolition). The rest of the material is fairly consistent along the lines of "it's better than listening to the radio." If you are a serious Priest fan, Turbo is worth buying to make your collection complete. I'm not embarrassed to own it. You will likely find yourself listening to it every now and then. If you like softer pop metal and were thinking of checking out Priest, Turbo is the place to start. But please don't cruise for chicks while blasting this CD from the car. You may as well be walking down the streets in polyester bellbottoms to the falsetto refrains of 'Staying Alive'.
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