Judas Priest – ‘The Complete Albums Collection’ – Box Set Review

Published on by 2loud2oldmusic

As you read yesterday, for Christmas I received Queen’s ‘Queen 40’ Box Sets. I also received this box set from Judas Priest called ‘The Complete Albums Collection’. Now this is not a very accurate title because it really isn’t the “Complete” albums collection as it is missing quite a bit. But before we get to tell you what it is missing, let me tell you why it is called the “Complete” album collection. That is because it contains all 17 Judas Priest albums featuring the classic line up of Rob Halford, Glenn Tipton, K. K. Downing and Ian Hill (2). That was the focus of the collection.

As a result, it is missing the 2 Ripper Owen albums including ‘Jugulator’ (1997) and ‘Demolition’ (2001) as well as 2 Live albums, ’98 Live Meltdown’ and ‘Live in London’ (2003). And since this was released in 2011, it is missing the two newer albums ‘Redeemer of Souls’ (2014) and ‘Firepower’ (2018) both Richie Faulkner on guitar and not K.K. Downing. Oh yeah, and the live album ‘Battle Cry’ from 2016. So technically this isn’t really the “Complete Albums Collection”…but I am okay with that as this is a great beginners set as you get a 17 albums for one low price to get things going.

Let us go through the timeline of what is included. But before we do that, all the CDs come in a cardboard sleeve that is similar to a vinyl album jacket with the original artwork recreated on the album jacket. There are no plastic cases and no CD booklet for each disc. Instead you get a 40 page booklet with photos, liner notes and album credits. And that is it. There is nothing extra special thrown in although a lot of the discs have a couple of the bonus tracks included. This really is just the CDs and no frills.

The 70’s:

Here is what is included. From the 70’s you get the albums ‘Rocka Rolla’ (1974), ‘Sad Wings of Destiny’ (1976), ‘Sin After Sin’ (1977), ‘Stained Class’ (1978), ‘Killing Machine’ (1978 – The US saw it as ‘Hell Bent For Leather’), and “Unleashed in the East’ (Live – 1979)…

The 80’s:

We also get their 80’s output which includes ‘British Steel’ (1980), ‘Point of Entry’ (1981), ‘Screaming For Vengeance’ (1982), ‘Defenders of the Faith’ (1984), ‘Turbo’ (1986), ‘Priest…Live!’ (1987) and lastly, ‘Ram It Down’ (1988)…

And Beyond – 90’s & 00’s:

Because the skipped the non-classic line-up, we only have 4 more releases left and they are ‘Painkiller’ (1990), ‘Angel of Retribution’ (2005), ‘Nostradamus’ (2008) and finally ‘A Touch of Evil: Live’ (2009)…

And that is it. Like I said, there are no frills with this one. It is only a straight up collection and there is nothing really special in it at all. And for that, it really only gets a 2.5 out of 5.0 Stars. It gets the 2.5 only because it is 17 albums in one easy grab for a decent price of around $75 new. That works out to $4.41 per CD, which is pretty great.

Now, the big news with this one. As I said with the Queen collection yesterday, my goal is to get all of these reviewed before the year is over. You will not see a Judas Priest Review every week like you are seeing me do with the Kiss reviews, but there are 17 to review so they will come fairly frequently. I hope I haven’t bitten off more than I can chew with reviewing all these discs plus Queen and finishing off the Kiss Review Series (which should end around June/July), but we will have to see. Thanks for hanging around and here is the entire set that will get reviewed…and maybe I will throw in the 4 studio albums that have been missed…

55 thoughts on “Judas Priest – ‘The Complete Albums Collection’ – Box Set Review”

  2. I’m pretty sure I saw Mike with that same box set, but I could be wrong! This will be interesting since I had the guts to say that some of Judas Priest’s songs were a bit tame in one of my posts. So I’m looking forward to seeing your take on Priest, even the Ripper Owens albums, if you have them!

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    1. I remember Lebrain almost having an aneurism when I described “Delivering the Goods” as ‘filler’. We’ve certainly got a wide range of opinions on Priest here.

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  4. I’ve seen that set before, and wonder a bit how they can call it complete when it’s missing albums. That’d be like doing a Maiden box and leaving out Di’Anno or Bayley. Hm. Still, there’s a ton of cool stuff on there, and I’ll be looking forward to your thoughts on the records as I only have a few of them here.

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          1. Oh for sure, I’m just particular ha! Like ‘Hits’ sets that leave off obvious tracks or replace studio with live tracks. If I ever had a band, none of these shenanigans would happen. Complete would be complete!

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    1. Actually, with streaming, you don’t even have to wait to get them all. I don’t have everything for the Kiss series, but I have access to hear it in some form or fashion and that works. Eventually I will get it all though.

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      1. If I was subsribed to a decent service I proably would. I used Spotify to listen to Done With Mirrors last week and that album sounded really awful to me. But I could not tell if it was how it was or if the lo-fi stream was the culprit. Plus, I have so much in my collection already to get to, I can wait to finish off the Priest before I get to it, lol

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  10. This is nice. I have a chunk of Priest albums and I mostly enjoy them. As for the ‘Complete Albums Collection’ shenanigans, I’m assuming this is related to what’s owned by Sony (although the first couple were released on Gull, I’m assuming there’s licensing differences).

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