Judas Priest - Twin Turbos (1986)

I'm not a massive fan of heavy metal, although I do still consider the first two Judas Priest albums to be classics of the genre, but as my tastes have changed over the years I've listened to less and less, with the last JP album that I got being 'British Steel'. I'd therefore never heard 'Turbo' when I started to see people mentioning a proposed album from the band called 'Twin Turbos', and so I decided to investigate. When Judas Priest were recording songs for the follow-up to the highly-rated 'Defenders Of The Faith', their idea was to issue a double album which traced the different sorts of metal that Priest had played throughout their career, right up the current album, which was their first to be recorded digitally, and also the first to feature guitar synths. Eighteen songs were written and recorded, and the album was all set to go when the record company put a stop to it, saying that double albums were too expensive and were reserved for live records and compilations. They even turned down the band's suggestion of pricing it as a single disc, and told them that they wanted a regular record full of potential singles. The band therefore picked out the most commercial songs and 'Turbo' was issued in 1986. Of course, rumours soon spread about the aborted double album, and the fact that the songs left off the eventual release were much heavier than those that were issued, which proved to be true when some of them appeared on the next album, the return to form 'Ram It Down', in 1988. This reconstruction pulls together 16 of the 18 songs recorded for 'Twin Turbos', as 'Under The Gun' and 'Fighting For Your Love' remain unreleased, despite other tracks appearing on remastered re-issues.

Track listing

01 All Fired Up
02 Reckless
03 Hard As Iron
04 Hot For Love
05 Rock You Around The World
06 Out In The Cold
07 Love You To Death
08 Private Property
09 Locked In
10 Monsters Of Rock
11 Turbo Lover
12 Parental Guidance
13 Ram It Down
14 Wild Nights, Hot & Crazy Days
15 Red, White & Blue
16 Prisoner Of Your Eyes