REVIEW: Judas Priest – Trouble Shooters (1989 CBS cassette)

JUDAS PRIEST – Trouble Shooters (1989 CBS cassette)

Readers understand that I’m pretty anti-cassette.  For most of my life, I had shitty equipment and shitty tapes so my memories of fiddling with tapes are not happy ones.  You do tend to find oddities on cassette that don’t exist on any other media, which is one reason I’ll always need a tape deck.

Here’s one from my personal collection that I bought in early 1990.

Bob Schipper knew my favourite band in 1989/1990 was the mighty Priest.  He told me of a cassette I didn’t have called Trouble Shooters.  The one detail I can’t recall is what store he saw it in, but I gave him some money and he got me the tape.

I was disappointed that it was a cheap tape with nothing on the inlay, but I now had a Priest tape I didn’t own before.  I spied the release date:  1989.  It looked odd sitting in my tape cases filed as the “newest” Judas Priest release, with Les Binks on the front cover.  Trouble Shooters was in fact a bargain bin compilation made up of songs from Sin After Sin, Stained Class, Hell Bent for Leather, Point of Entry, British Steel, and Defenders of the Faith.  Another thing that looked strange:  the uber-metal Priest logo on the front.  Turning it up to 11, it’s rendered as the insane-o looking Jüdäs Priést.

The running order on these tapes is usually pretty random, but side one of Trouble Shooters goes down really well.  “Let Us Prey/Call For the Priest” is a pretty cool way to open a tape, with that low hum of instruments before the regal guitarmonies enter.  (Note that the second part of the title isn’t printed anywhere.)  “Let Us Prey” is suited to commence a Priest tape that is heavier than the average.  Its proto-thrash pacing represents Judas Priest at an early peak.  Then, sensibly, Trouble Shooters gets the “hit single” out of the way early, in this case “Living After Midnight”.  Casual music buyers picked up these tapes in discount bins, so you have to put on the hit early; the second slot working best.

I appreciated that they included two songs from Point of Entry as that has always been a personal favourite.  The title track is parsed wrong as “Trouble Shooters” when it should be all one word.  Still a good song, with Priest taking a simple sassy 4/4 time stance.  “Turning Circles” from the same album is lesser known but possesses a slower groove that works just as well as the fast ones.  The secret seems to be Rob Halford, who twists and turns every word for maximum expression.

Side One is granted an epic quality thanks to “The Green Manalishi”, my favourite Priest song of all time and certainly a crowd pleaser too.  (Yeah, yeah, I know it’s a Fleetwood Mac cover.)  You just can’t find a better closer for a Side One anywhere else in the Priest canon.

Continuing the excellent sequencing is a song heralding the arrivals of “Metal Gods” on Side Two.  Then “Some Heads Are Gonna Roll”, the most recent song from 1984’s Defenders of the Faith.  Nothing from Turbo or Ram It Down.  I wonder if there were rules about what could and couldn’t go on these budget compilations.  Maybe they were limited to music five years old or more.  Back to the tape, “Some Heads” follows a similar sonic mood as “Metal Gods”, though the production is less sleek and more muddled.  It’s still apocalyptic metal for breakfast.

Finally it’s back to the start with a couple epics from the early days.  For me, I think I would have ended the tape on “Sinner”, but it comes before “Saints In Hell” here.  Much like “Let Us Prey” on Side One, these songs show off the early savage side of Judas Priest, ripping meat from the bone raw and ugly.  It’s barbaric metal with sharply precise moves.

I don’t know why I hung on to this tape when so many of them ended up in a Thunder Bay landfill.  I’m glad I did:  this was a fun cassette to review.

3.5/5 stars

 

11 comments

      1. Words to live by “Don’t tell Bop”

        I bought a bunch of cassettes the other day.
        Gotta love rare albums for a quarter.
        The same ones on vinyl would be $50-100 each.

        I get it that others do not like the format due to past listening experiences, but a cheap cassette can be a nice stopgap until you find the album you have a hard time finding on vinyl or cd.

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  6. I love this tape it is a big part of my child hood!
    For me this was my first time seeing or hearing of Judas priest. When I was a kid in the mid 90s early teen 13 I used to save all my lunch money for school lunch. In those days lunch costed 2 dollars for the basic lunch and there were extra add ons the rich kids could buy junk food extra fries etc. But I never ate at school. I drank a can of V8 and smoked two camel cigarettes I would often steal from my uncle. In those days everyone rode they’re bikes everywhere still.

    I lived in the hood but was bussed into the nice neighborhood Jr high school. all the kids thought I was too poor to eat lunch. But the real reason I didn’t was because I saved the 2 dollars each day and at the end of the week I had 10 dollars. Than I only needed 1.68 to buy a tape I took out the trash and did the dishes on both Saturday and Sunday for a few bucks like 5 that was enough with the lunch money to buy one tape and some soda pop or some candy. I would ride to K-mart from my house about 3 miles down a busy road with lots of stores on it.

    I started with Metallica there were only 5 to get at that time. I moved on to Megadeth and black Sabbath. So I was riding to get my tape for the week. And my bicycle tire blew out. Great a flat.
    Now I would have to sacrifice my tape so be able to buy a patch kit for my bike tire. I was so disappointed. So I fixed the tire and said well at least I can get a soda pop and try to sneak a peak at the nudie magazines at the good store. That particular store didn’t keep them behind the counter. after that I would probably go look at the train cars on the rail road tracks by my house or throw rocks in the creek. So I got my pop and as I was paying for it I seen it!

    a rack of cassettes there at the gas station.
    It was a display rack that could spin and it had about 50 different cassettes what was on there. The eagles Madonna Kenny Rodgers.
    I didn’t want none of that stuff. and than I seen it troubleshooters by Judas priest. I asked the guy behind the counter what is this? He said Judas priest is good metal you will like it. I said is it like Metallica. He said kind of but they came out before Metallica. I said ok I’ll try it.

    So the price for it was only 4.99$ because it was a gas station bargain bin tape. I played it once and rode around on my bike listening to it on my philco cassette walkman. I couldn’t stop playing it I played it all that day riding through neghborgoods and that night. When I woke up the next day I played it even more.

    I showed it to my friend who had never heard of Judas priest and we listened to it on his boombox. This was the first priest tape on every owned. I actually have two copies of it on cassette now. It’s the only tape I have a double for. As an adult I bought two of them because of the memory from getting it. I love metal priest maiden Metallica Megadeth sabbath Pantera kreator but this will always be my favorite cassette tape. If my tire would have went flat that day I would have never got this.
    and I’m so glad it happened that way. This was only released on tape never made it on a record or compact disc. To me this tape is a treasure.

    I love this tape!

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