Judas Priest: Live and Rare (Review)

Well this is a bit of an odd sight. A Judas Priest review that is not part of the dual-review series. But we aren’t doing compilations, so that’s why this one is appearing on it’s own.

The disc is a collection of b-sides, almost entirely live stuff, and is in chronological order. We start off strong with a live cut of “Beyond the Realms of Death”. It’s a great song and it didn’t make Unleashed in the East, so it’s much appreciated here. Two more ’78 cuts follow, “White Heat Red Hot” (still don’t like the song) and “Starbreaker”. The latter is quite good as well. The immortal scream is not as good as the one on Unleashed in the East, but it’s actually live this time.

Then we go to 1981 for some live stuff from British Steel. “Living after Midnight” is always welcome, but “Breaking the Law” without Ripper isn’t. The ’81 stuff then segues into the strongest part of the disc, the three songs from the US festival in 1983. “Green Manalishi” starts things off pretty strong but “Breaking the Law” makes another unwelcome appearance. “You’ve Got Another Thing Coming” closes the set out well though.

And then we get to the last two songs, which are definitely out of place. The first is a live version of “Private Property” from 1986. It’s not one of my favorite songs off Turbo but it’s certainly not my least favorite Priest song.

The weirdness is then turned up to eleven, with closing the closing track being a ‘Hi-octane’ mix of “Turbo Lover”. I loved the original song, but this mix is just sucks everything I liked about it either. The heavy chugging synths are neutered, there’s a silly echo/repeat on one word midway through the song and weird vocoder effects on the frankly unnecessary extended outro. The track isn’t completely terrible due to the quality of the underlying song, but I’m never going to listen to it over another version.

For die-hard fans and collectors, this disc surely a bit of a godsend, but to me it falls pretty flat. Still, it’s Priest, and there are some good songs on it

The verdict- 3.5/5