1089. Judas Priest / Ram It Down. 1988. 3.5/5

When the decision came about to split the “Twin Turbo” double album idea into a ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ concept over two albums, there were a number of songs left over from Turbo that came to be used here on Ram It Down. And there are noticeable differences in the songs of both albums. A lot of the synths used in Turbo have been moved out or placed in the background here, allowing this album to go back to being a guitar and drum based track list. The lyrics for the most part are a simplified version of recent albums, trying to return to a different time. It is an effort to make a heavier album than the last, whereas perhaps making a ‘better’ album may have produced something that was more significant.

It holds up with the opening track, the title track “Ram it Down” which screams out of the speakers at you with fire and speed, the best elements of the Judas Priest juggernaut. Perhaps it is somewhat simplistic in lyrics and base set, but there are any number of great Priest songs that you could name that are like that, and this is another great version of that. Why it is maligned so much I don’t know, because “Ram it Down” is a great metal song. This is followed by the perhaps metaphorically titled “Heavy Metal”, but again it has what you want. Halford’s vocals are in his upper range almost all the way through, while the magnificent guitars of Downing and Tipton shred away in style. As it is obviously written as an anthem, it is strange that it has been used so infrequently live since the end of this tour.
We head into a section of the album where the words ‘double entendre’ come into play most significantly. “Love Zone” is a strange concept song for this band, or at least so I would have thought. Perhaps in the end it just confirms the groupie situation for the touring band is the same for everyone, but it wasn’t a direction I thought Judas priest would cover. I was mistaken. This is followed by “Come and Get It” which for all intents and purposes is just about the music and if you want it… well, you know… but I’m sure if you put your mind to it you could come up with a way that the lyrics here could be interpreted another way. This then leads into “Hard as Iron” (yeah I know, pretty easy to laugh at…) which again lyrically doesn’t point in the way you might initially think but you could certainly make a case that it does. Beyond this lame attempt at breaking down the lyrics of these three songs, each continues in the heavy vein of the album, with a greater push to emphasise the guitars and vocals on this scale.
“Blood Red Skies” is a beauty. Without even trying to compare them for fear of being seen as ludicrous, “Blood Red Skies” is in a similar vein to past gems such as “Beyond the Realms of Death” and “Victim of Changes” in its composition. It’s moody subtleness throughout emphasises its difference to the other songs on the album, and as a result I think it is one of the standouts on Ram It Down. “I’m a Rocker” retains the slower tempo as the follow up which is probably slightly strange considering the title and lyrics, but it again looks the chanting anthem qualities between the twin solos of Downing and Tipton.
One of the songs that I am not sure about even today is the cover version of Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”. Done for the soundtrack of the comedy film of the same name, it was then shoehorned onto this album and released as a single as well. Yep okay, it’s good that they did their own version of the song, and didn’t stick to a note by note revision of the original, and the band sounds great here, but I often just think is it necessary? Another song, “Thunder Road” was bumped from the album in order to fit this on, and I believe it is a superior and better song. It was eventually released as a bonus track on the remastered version of Point of Entry. To be honest, “Thunder Road” could have replaced either of the last two songs on the album too, as I think it is also better than them. “Love You to Death” and “Monsters of Rock” are both really only average songs that perhaps lengthen the album longer than it needed, and are both just a little too slow in tempo after the first half of the album for my liking.
For many Judas Priest fans, this album over-corrected what they felt wasn’t quite right with the previous album. There was a fire-and-brimstone quality that perhaps it didn’t have and they wanted more of that. In essence there is plenty of that here on Ram It Down, but it is missing the pure rocking anthem that songs like “Turbo Lover” and “Locked In” provided from that album. Many probably felt that a mixture of the two – the harder, heavier edge of Ram It Downalong with a fissuring of the keyboard and synth sound from Turbo to influence the feel of the songs – may produce the album that they were looking for. This indeed is what came to pass with the following album which opened the new decade in the most amazing style.

In many ways like Point of Entry this album gets lost in the discography of Judas Priest, more from the album that followed than from any real distaste of the album itself. It may never be considered one of the great releases, but it isn’t quite the disappointment that some make out they believe it is. Taken on its merits it still has plenty that should be better regarded than it is.

Rating: “Can you feel the power, blinded by the light.” 3.5/5