Published on Mar 23, 2005
I have been a fan of Judas Priest for quite some time now, but
as much as I think they created a lot of great music, I’m more than
capable of admitting that when they were bad, there could scarcely
have been anyone worse. With the album
Ram It Down, they unfortunately managed to serve up a
platter that is utterly putrid from start to finish.
Their previous album,
Turbo, generated loads of controversy among fans of the band
because of its more commercial sound and the first-time use of
synthesizers. I think this caused the band to panic and they went
into damage control mode, and this paranoia apparently resulted in
Ram It Down, an album so generic that it’s insulting. You
couldn’t get a better parody if you tried.
Every aspect of the music completely sucks. Period. All the
high-pitched screaming and tastelessly wanking interchangeable
solos that overpopulate the disc are nothing but a big special
effects show designed to distract you, the listener, from one very
sad fact: that the band hasn’t bothered to write any songs. It’s
true, these are not songs but rather a stew of uninspired snippets
tossed together like a salad in the hope that something might
miraculously gel and actually produce moments of music worth
hearing, but it fails on all counts. The entire affair is so lazy
that I feel embarrassed for the band that this album is widely
available for the public to hear. I dare say that just a few years
prior, not one of these “songs” would have had any chance of making
the cut on one of their quality albums. Dreadful stuff of the kind
only a band that has completely lost its way could produce and see
fit for release.
The group’s two lead guitarists, Glen Tipton and K.K. Downing,
are incapable of serving up a single measly memorable riff
throughout the seemingly eternal 50 minute running time, and both
are guilty of falling prey to the all-flash-and-no-substance
soloing that had become standard issue in rock and metal in the
’80s. Rarely has their playing ever sounded so tired. Add to that
the fact that the tone of the guitars is hideous as well — they
sound completely tinny and almost digitized.
Rob Halford also deserves a lot of the blame for failing to
create any vocal melodies with great hooks as he had so often done
in the past. He relegates himself to dramatically shouting a lot of
the time, followed by the same high pitched wailing over and over
in every song instead of actually singing, and not surprisingly, it
never goes anywhere. Or in the case of a track like “Heavy Metal,”
it goes to places no person ever wants to go — just try to listen
to the vocals on that gem and not cringe. Don’t even get me started
on his sub-elementary school level dreck passing for lyrics.
I don’t think the rhythm section even entered the studio at all.
I hear a bunch of ugly synthesized bass and the kind of monotonous
mechanical drumming only a cheap drum machine makes, unless they
had the shittiest drummer I’ve ever heard. Even the Sisters Of
Mercy’s Doktor Avalanche had more personality.
The production job completes the disaster. Judas Priest tried to
regain some of their meaner, darker sound from earlier years with
this release, but aside from the fact that they had absolutely no
songwriting ideas, the actual recording itself has no power.
Everything sounds echoey and trebly with hardly any discernible low
end. Sometimes there were moments where I had the feeling the
recording was slightly sped up even, further blunting what might
otherwise have at least sounded a little meatier, if nothing
else.
It’s also essential to mention that even if the album were
slightly less terrible than it is overall, there’s simply no
escaping how dramatically, colossally, and hugely wretched their
cover is of Chuck Berry’s classic anthem “Johnny B. Goode.”
Experience in amazement how your ears implode upon enduring the
worst cover in recorded music history.
And there you have it — I would nominate
Ram It Down as quite possibly being the worst album of the
lengthy career of Judas Priest, and quite possibly one of the worst
metal albums I’ve ever heard. Spinal Tap in all its glory. Trust
me, if you make the mistake of listening to this disc as an
introduction to this band, you will never ever want to explore any
further, and that would be a shame. It’s baffling to me how this
same band managed to completely turn around practically overnight
and record the highly-praised, classic album
Painkiller as their next release only two years later.