Judas Priest is revisiting its tenth album, 1986’s Turbo, in a turbo-charged 30th anniversary edition coming on February 3, 2017 from Legacy Recordings.  The original, remastered album will be expanded with two additional discs of bonus material on this upcoming reissue, and the album will also be available sans bonus tracks in a new 150-gram vinyl pressing.

Turbo marked a crucial step in the evolution of the band.  It began life as one-half of a planned double album entitled Twin Turbos, before the band realized that this set of songs was strong enough and commercial enough to sustain its own release.  The familiar themes of sci-fi and fantasy were underplayed in favor of more grounded lyrical subjects, while the addition of guitar synthesizers into the soundscape made Turbo play like a response to the increasingly synth-driven pop sound of the 1980s.  Though Turbo took Rob Halford, K.K. Downing, Glenn Tipton, Ian Hill, and Dave Holland into new territory, fans rewarded the LP with strong sales.  Turbo, a No. 17 success on the Billboard 200, went Gold within a couple months of its release, and was certified Platinum a year later.

A 2001 CD reissue added the outtake “All Fired Up” and a live performance of “Locked In” from St. Louis, Missouri to the track listing.  The 2017 edition, Turbo 30, drops these two tracks, instead filling two bonus discs with the 20-song Live at the Kemper Arena, Kansas City, recorded during Priest’s 1986 Fuel for Life tour.

The press release for the deluxe Turbo adds, “The 80s is considered to have been the best decade for heavy metal – Judas Priest roared through it and at the half way point went into unchartered territory with Turbo.  Always believing that metal should have no boundaries, Priest challenged themselves taking on board new technical inventions to create fresh ideas and push their sound forward.  The combined songs show another side of Priest’s range of creativity that captures a theme and energy infused with the over the top sensibilities of that era.  The ‘Fuel for Life’ tour certainly encapsulated the decadence of the times! Turbo remastered and accompanied by a pedal to the metal live recording from Kansas reveals Priest on high octane – Raising fists and devil horns to the next level.”

You can hear it for yourself on February 3, and pre-orders links are available below!

Judas Priest, Turbo 30 (Columbia/Legacy, 2017) (Amazon U.S. / Amazon U.K. / Amazon Canada TBD)

CD 1: Original Album (Columbia CK 40158, 1986)

1. Turbo Lover
2. Locked In
3. Private Property
4. Parental Guidance
5. Rock You All Around the World
6. Out in the Cold
7. Wild Nights, Hot and Crazy Days
8. Hot for Love
9. Reckless

CDs 2 & 3: Live at the Kemper Arena, Kansas City (1986) (previously unreleased)

1. Out in the Cold
2. Locked In
3. Heading Out to the Highway
4. Metal Gods
5. Breaking the Law
6. Love Bites
7. Some Heads Are Gonna Roll
8. The Sentinel
9. Private Property
10. Desert Plains
11. Rock You All Around the World

1. The Hellion
2. Electric Eye
3. Turbo Lover
4. Freewheel Burning
5. Victim of Changes
6. The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)
7. Living After Midnight
8. You’ve Got Another Thing Coming
9. Hell Bent for Leather