Do I Still Hate "Turbo" by Judas Priest? 

How do YOU feel about the album? And if you hate it, would you be willing to give it another chance all of these years later? Let me know that, and anything else that makes sense, in the comments below.

So Turbo is my favorite Priest album. No joke, I absolutely love the glam and slickness of the record, which still has the signature Priest sound. The themes may have been dumbed down for a wider commercial audience, but it doesn't change the fact that each song shines in its own way. Yes, even Parental Guidance and Rock You All Around the World. I really like the heavy synth use to be completely honest, and it really gives Turbo its own identity (for better or for worse). On side A, Turbo Lover is still my all time favorite Priest track; the synth buildup, the pulsing bass line, the steady drums, the clean guitar riffs and licks all make for one of Priest's best tunes. Locked In's clean synths really add a nice flair to it, which don't cover the vocal highs of Halford and the dual guitar perfection that is KK and Tipton. Private Property is heavy handed in its riffs and arena rock chorus, really powerful if sounding too cheesy. Parental Guidance is a fun romp, extremely pandering, but super catchy with a tight solo. Rock You All Around the World hits fast, obnoxiously catchy with another great solo (actually one of my favorite tracks from Priest). On side B, Out In The Cold as an opener was a good choice, slowing down from the end of side A, and coming in with synths that really make the atmosphere of the song really work (one of Priest's best ballads for sure). Wild Nights has a great opening riff, and has one of the better vocal performances from Halford on Turbo; a fun summer track that is once again really damn catchy with an excellent bridge section. Hot For Love, while seemingly starting off weak (but I do like that intro I have to be honest), is probably the heaviest track on this record, and while the chorus is not as good as the rest (the buildup to it is great though), the dual guitar solo which is one of the best in Priest's career personally makes up for all the shortcomings in this song. Finally, Reckless (as cited by many as Turbo's best song) is a great ending, with soaring vocals, riffs that really stick in your head, and a tight solo which fits all together in a perfect package. As a bonus, All Fired Up (the 2001 reissue track) is a fantastic track that should not have been left off. If the synths bother you that much, this is a perfect showing of what could have been. An excellent speed metal song (Rapid Fire 2.0 anyone?), with one of my favorite Priest bridge and solo sections. I also have to mention, that the best way to listen to these songs are the live renditions (especially Turbo Lover, Locked In, and Rock You All Around the World). So you know, just my two cents on Turbo.

Turbo has like 4/5 of the BEST Guitar solos the band has EVER pulled off in their career. Reckless, Locked in, Turbo, HOT FOR LOVE is INCREDIBLE. That Guitar work Is something else.

I never hated it. It has one of the best solos ever on Turbo Lover. I'll rock Turbo with 2 middle fingers high to the haters any day.

As my very first Priest album, I love it. My absolute favorite track is Parental Guidance.

Turbo is fuckin amazing!!! I love every song on there.

You are right. There were a lot of complaints from fans but I liked. Great comments. Main complaint was the drums which was not played by a real drummer

It was 1986. Guitarists were goofing around with synth effects, and part of it was just because it was fun. The thing with this album is, if you meet it on its own terms as a cheesy pop album with metal guitars.... it's fun, I enjoy it. I'm glad it only got made once though LOL

I love Judas Priest whatever music they do, I'm a fan of Glam Metal bands like Ratt, Cinderella, Dokken, Stryper, Motley Crue and Judas Priest fit in perfect 🤘🤘🤘

I don't think the synths are a problem, I think the cornball hair metal/hard rock/pop rock style that sometimes really damages the music

Love Turbo, has lots of cheese but good representation of its time.

You know what? Turbo is a decent album.

From 76 to 1990 no Judas Priest album sound the same and that's what I loved about them. Point of entry is amazing and its not a metal album.

I think there are hints of Turbo on Defenders. Look at "Love Bites", for example.

1986. Two of my favorite bands let me down. I've grown to love 'Somewhere In Time' after 'Powerslave' but still can't stomach much of 'Turbo' after 'Defenders' . I think the drum machines used on 'Turbo' bring it down as well.

Turbo was completely unexpected kinda Nostradamus. I like this kind of surprises - Nostradamus is a hidden gem, Turbo is simply fun

So, how do I feel about Ford mustang? So Judas priest turbo, is fully understood by 2022. It's a product exactly the same as Ford mustang. It gets rebuilt year after year and the performance is more impressive every time they remake it. They get better and better each time they make it again. It's comparable to televisions. They get bigger and better every year. The old version of turbo is smaller and more HiFi than the 30th anniversary version. The 30th anniversary is bigger and lower in pitch to the original. It's as if I'm 20 metres closer to the band with more focused sound.

Definitely not what fans would’ve been expecting but I rate it quite highly as a fun break in the discography 🤘

Dude..... Loved you on The Walking Dead! I wish you didn't kill Glenn though..... :(

Turbo is admittedly a bit cheesy compared to the rest of the Priest catalogue, but... I still love it! Turbo is great road trip music. It's also a snapshot in time for me when I started getting into metal. It's like your first car or first girlfriend. The 80's were an awesome time to be a teenager. Great memories! Look at the garbage kids listen to now. I have that tour's Priest Live on VHS. I went back and bought all of the older albums soon afterwards.

It's important to recall that Master of Puppets came out the month before. I didn't even hate Turbo - it just didn't matter. Now, I Love Turbo. Part of the issue with Turbo is not just the fact that they're using synthesizers, but the Roland GR700/707 guitar synthesizers. I owned one in the mid-90s (for 300 bucks!) - they had major difficulty following fluid playing and forced you to play to the synth rather than the opposite. The result is stilted and mechanistic. Plus, it took real work to program an aggressive sound in the GR700, most of the sounds are rounded off and not edgy enough. Interesting that Iron Maiden used them that same year, yet the rounded off sounds didn't impact their style nearly as much.

I love this album. I like that Tour and the look the band had. Not Painkiller, Defenders, Hell bent for leather or Screaming for vengeance but still love it. 🤘🏻😎🚬

Malice in the beginning should have been the next Judas Priest record after Defenders LOL and I love both these albums mentioned biturbo definitely took a while I don't hate it as much as I used to and as far as Malice go right turbo always gets mentioned more for the wrong reasons mostly

I always enjoyed this album since the day it was released .

I love turbo. I'm a guitar player and this album is strong. Reckless best song, they never played it live

I actually really like Judas priest's lyrics on most albums, but I understand what you mean by cringy, half the songs on turbo, the mainstreamish anthemic sounding songs from british steel and killing machine and some other stuff really make me question what was going through their heads

Valid points!

Great video! I like this album for the most part, but there are definitely a few filler and average tracks, especially in comparison to their other material. 'Hot For Love' has always been the song I felt was the biggest filler, so it was interesting to see that you rated it as your choice of worst on Side 2, haha! Some of the poppy tracks like 'Wild Nights...' are fun and easy to sing along to. 'Out in the Cold' and the title track are probably my favourites.

Ian Gillan's lyrics also make me cringe and sometimes it's really painful to listen to some of them, even though i love purple, gillan and sabbath

I have remastered version, Mas-Turbo.

If Lemmy can do Johnny B. Goode and people love him for it, then why dump on Turbo?

The first time I heard Turbo was hearing it at full volume during a game of Lazer Tag. It was a pretty damn good album and one that still holds up today IMO. About the only song that doesn't work for me is "Hot For Love" which sounds like a cheesy 80's made-for-TV movie soundtrack. Everything else still works for what it is. No, the album did not reach the heights of Painkiller, British Steel, Screaming for Vengeance or Defenders of the Faith. But it has a pretty good set of songs, and the synths were a nice experience that sometimes worked and sometimes didn't.

Did you go into stores in 1986 and ask for 8 track tapes? Do you ask for Travelers checks when buying something expensive? do you ask for hard tickets ? do you shop online do on line banking? or do you make changes? so in 1986 Iron Maiden had synths, Van Halen on the 5150 had synths, Flock of Seagulls , Modern English, Tears for Fears, Human League all bands had synths. it's not like when Iron Maiden was on the Powerslave, they were on the Defenders of the Faith a little variety isn't it cool Heavy Metal synths No in 1970's Heavy Metal had no synths also in 1970's we used camera's , we went to the bank no online shopping no online Banking. as far as Turbo I think it's a great album I would say Parental Guidance is one of the bigger hits MTV has a video for that , Wild nights and hot and crazy days isn't the best song on the album , Hot for Love is a great tune , so is Reckless , Turbo Lover and Locked in are the other hits this album has 3 hits Out in the Cold is a great tune. out of 5 stars I give this album 4 it's not Back in Black , For those about to Rock it's also not Van Halen 3 i, Kiss Sonic Boom good album.

Originally the band was going to release a double album, but due to label pressure they ended um releasing 2 albums (Turbo & Ram It Down). It's interesting to mention the pop elements on some of the songs, because they actually worked with dance producers (That's Right!!) on at leats 3 tracks that never surfaced oficially (or unofucially for that matter) and those same tracks were panned by the records execs and shelved into obscurity. As for the record itself, I like it for the testimony of an era, it's not an album I revisit that often, but when I do I get a Kick out of it. And totally agree with you that Reckless is a great song, as is Out in the Cold particulary on a live setting.

I love Turbo. Despite the mid 80s synthasizers, I love it. I agree that Reckless is the strongest track, and I also have Defenders of the Faith as my favourite Judas Priest album. That said I also enjoy hair metal quite a bit and never got into extreme metal. Tried, but it put me off. I think as a result of that I may be more forgiving to the synth. And as a guitar guy, I absolutely love the guitar solos and the riffage, which to my mind is stronger than on British Steel. The writing could've indeed been better, and I also would've loved the guitars to be more prevelant. But I very much love the album. Still feels like it has a lot more in common with Screaming for Vengeance and Defenders of the Faith rather than British Steel which is a very good thing to my mind. Because Turbo has a couple of strong tracks, where as British steel to my mind is 10 tracks of filler. I really don't like British steel, which is where I feel Judas Priest really cashed in. While british steel is a boring as fuck Hell bent for Leather, Turbo is more or less Defenders/Screaming with more synth. My JP albums ranked are as follows: 1. Defenders 2. Painkiller 3. Hell Bent for Leather 4. Sin after Sin 5. Screaming for Vengeance 6. Stained Class 7. Sad wings of Destiny 8. Turbo 9. Firepower 10. Redeemer of Souls 11. Jugulator 12. Angel of Retribution 13. Nostradamus 14. Ram it Down 15. Point of Entry 16. Demolition 17. Rocka Rolla 18. British Steel Considering Judas Priest's entire discography, Judas Priest have always been an evolving band where all the albums are different from each other in their own way. In that context, I enjoy Judas Priest the most when they try to be different from their past work, or try to put their own spin on something new. Rocka Rolla is Judas Priest copying other early 70s hard rock bands. I put British Steel last cause that's their least creative album of all their albums. It's the most safe one. I can enjoy the songs for what they are like braking the law and such, but none of them can blow me away and make my hair stand up straight like Reckless from Turbo or Freewheel Burning from Defenders. Aside from British steel, I love the rest of 'em to different degrees.

Ahhh, the peppermint hand-job album. Fair reassessment. It was my first Priest, so it’s a little special. But yeah, some tracks, even for a fifth grader, were a bit embarrassing

Yup, not my fave. But, great look ,and re visit into why and what and where they were as a band. They tend to re invent every other album.

All I can tell you is I was 15 when this came out threw the fucking album against the wall broke the cover in half first day I got it. To me it was an attempt to cash in on some glam metal focus group advice that totally backfired on them.

I dig the synth stuff on this album so much. The good songs on here like Turbo Lover and others are excellent, but songs like Private Property are horrendous. Mixed bag, but not as bad as I was lead to believe. Beats Nostradamus and Ram It Down imo.

This is not a review. This is gossip. Gossip has a 1 year time limit. Now there's a 30th anniversary version, a review must only talk about the record performance not the lyrics. The name describes the contents. So you don't talk about the contents cause everyone knows what the name means. When you say Ford mustang, everyone's supposed to know what mustang is. Everyone who needs to know should already know what turbo means. There's no need to gossip about lyrical content cause that's already understood. We're familiar with turbo. Ford mustang means wheelspinning power. Yeah, we get that. You don't go discussing parental control 30 years later. It's a brand not lyrics after 30 years. It's 3rd gear in a 2020 Ford mustang. You don't complain about 3rd gear in a 2020 ford mustang in a RU-vid video.

Turbo highly flawed, but had a sincerity about it, unlike Ram it down, which was a confused mess.

I was 16 when this came out so I'm about your age. I too was a huge metal head and Priest was my favorite band, so the anticipation for this album was off the charts for me. I'll admit I was a little disappointed the first few listens, but it definitely grew on me the more I listened, to the point where I really liked it if not loved it, and still do to this day. Not their best by a long shot, but a damned solid album in my opinion. Great review though!

I really liked it. It was just fun music. Don’t get me wrong it’s not their best work but it was great cruising music as a teen. I went to their concert because this album hooked me in.

You're crazy, Turbo is their high water mark, and totally everyone's favorite! Uh, Just kidding of course. :)

I love Turbo!!!!! Parental Guidance and Private Property absolutely kills!! don't listen to grumpy gramps, he's out of METALMUCIL!! HAHAHAHAA

Metal 🤘🏻Rules. Dude haven’t heard of chess king in years. Seen the turbo tour Cinderella opend. It was in Worcester Massachusetts

But does Judas Priest still hate you? 🤔

Reckless is the Best song from this album

Your Chess King comment made my day! It was right next to Wild Pair Shoes in my local mall circa mid/ late 80s.Totally semi ok with admitting I bought leopard and zebra skin boots there. I actually dug this when it came out. But realize now it was a bit pandering and dumbed down. Seemed like just a band with some new toys playing with sounds on a lot of the tracks. I used to rate this above Ram it Down as my least favorite.I now think that a combo of Turbo/Ram selected tracks would be a killer lp. Hated Parental Guidance then and still do. Priest's single worst song,just inching out the Johnny Be Good cover from Ram. Although I hear its Anthony Michael Hall's favorite Priest tune.

Love the title track but the rest? Very, very meh!

I was 15 when this came out and I remember being very disappointed with this album when it came out. I bought a used copy a few years ago and while I appreciate it more now, it's still not close to one of their best.

To me "Turbo" was a big disappointment back when it came out. Like you I was expecting them to continue along the path that "Screaming for Vengeance" & "Defenders of the Faith" laid out but we know how that worked out. It wasn't until the last couple of years that I even owned it on vinyl, never bothered to get it back then because I was so disappointed. I did buy the CD eventually sometime in the 1990s so I have warmed up to it more than I did when it was released. I feel the same way you do pretty much about the tracks and indeed "Reckless" is by far the best tune of the record.

I personally like the album. Not my favourite album of their discography, but not a bad one either. My first listen wasn't favorable either but it has grown a lot on me. Especially "Locked In", which is a track I've really come to love. The rhythm of Rob's vocals during the verse really is something that speaks to me and it really makes the kind of infatuation this song is about palpable. I think it helps to not expect Defenders of the Faith part II, too ;) It's... different. But that's actually something I love about Priest: they never come at you from the same direction twice. They always mix it up. As for "Parental Guidance" - I love it for the fact alone that it was Priest's way of giving Tipper Gore and her bunch of hypocrits the finger. It's "fuck the Parental Advisory stickers" made into a song. It also has lyrics that make me snort. "Every day you scream at me to turn the music low. Well if you keep on screaming, you'll make me deaf you know". How can you not love this cheeky attitude?

I like turbo, turbo lover is damn good song, rocka rolla is sucked and demolition

I always kinda liked Turbo. Catchy as hell with total cringfest lyrics and synthgasms but like you it reminds me of a relationship i was in at the time. Do "Cold Lake" next Matt

The solos god tier the music god awful

Turbo isn't best album but it's better much than some suck the newers albums, i opposite hate the newers judas priest albums, especially what i most hate is, nostradamus, what sucked shit

Still better than anything Kiss ever put out.

Not the best album to hear when you were new to heavy metal back then. 34 years later, I appreciate it better. Totally agree with Wild Nights song, awful track. I think there were worst albums back then as The Pack is Back and/or Change of Address. Bad moves in their careers.

"Looks like a sugar pop-coated candy thing" - Dude, it's anal beads made out of sweeties. Let's not sugar coat it. (Or coat it with anything else, for that matter!)

I agree with all that you said. I always hated this album. Such a letdown from Defenders. I tried to like it, but couldn't. Even years later I tried to listen to it again, but still didn't like it. Turbo Lover is not bad, but overall I don't like the songs.

HUGELY disappointed when this was released. Track 1 was palatable but after that it was all wtf material. Thankfully the live show was pretty good. But no, I'm not gonna listen to the album again. There's much better music to listen to.