Live From New Haven 1988

A two-disc Japanese edition of a Judas Priest concert given at New Haven, Connecticut on 7 August 1988, taken from the FM broadcast of the show; Straight Music issue it on 21 October 2026. The date falls inside the Mercenaries of Metal Tour, which the band ran behind that year's Ram It Down. After a warm-up in Amsterdam on 3 April, the tour proper opened in Stockholm on 7 May and played thirty-four European shows through June before moving to North America on 20 July; it closed in Vancouver on 22 October, seventy concerts in all, and New Haven was the thirteenth North American date. Ram It Down still carried some of the synthesiser colour of Turbo, but its title track ran fast and hard and the album is generally read as a swing back toward metal. The set reflects that only in part: four songs come from the new record and the rest are drawn from across the catalogue. No Japanese dates were played on this tour, and comparatively little of it was documented. Dave Holland left the drum stool when it ended, and his replacement, Scott Travis, took the band on to "Painkiller". Eighteen songs.