Judas Priest – Ram It Down (1988)

January 8, 2024

What a U-turn…. LOL

Whilst not as “weak” as Turbo, Ram It Down doubles down on the 80s-to-the-max vibes of stadium bands of that time period. BUT – and its a big but – the electronics here have a much more industrial element to them, at least that’s how it seems to me. There’s a coldness to them, a harshness and a heaviness. So instead I find myself welcoming these strange electronic / rhythmic elements into Priest’s otherwise organic rock sound, instead of rejecting the sterility like I did with Turbo.

It’s still difficult to see how they took a leap from this to something like Painkiller (a different drummer definitely helped), but for an album I was expecting to generally be pretty “meh”, I found myself enjoying a lot of Ram It Down, despite the fact that it has an odd sound and is a bit of a mixed bag, tracks like “I’m A Rocker”, “Johnny B Goode” and “Monsters Of Rock” make the final third of this thing pretty painful to get through. Thankfully, “Heavy Metal”, “Hard As Iron” and “Blood Red Skies” more than make up for those failures.