Unknown Soldier

The Lowdown
Saxon’s fifth studio album the Power & the Glory should’ve delivered Saxon as superstars stateside as it did with Def Leppard and their Pyromania album, but fate it seems had other plans in store for Saxon. The band went into the studio in 1983 on the back of three killer NWOBHM album classics Wheels of Steel, Strong Arm of the Law and Denim & Leather, as well as the live The Eagle Has Landed (see all these hot reviews) a period which had seen a stunning creative output by the band in just a few short years, a quality few of their rivals could match. Headed up by Biff Byford possibly the most important vocalist of the NWOBHM, where his vocals and the band’s sound had always veered to an epic metal approach with its steady stream of melody, even though the band did speed metal as good as anybody else when they wanted to. This meant that a combination of the band’s trademark sound and the tacking on of the beloved American AOR sound as demonstrated on a song like “Nightmare” should have come up trumps for the band in the USA. But in many ways compared to a band like Def Leppard, Saxon had their fate already sealed before they even went into the recording studio when it came to conquering the American market. Both they and Def Leppard hadn’t released a studio album in 1982, both bands had also toured vigorously BUT they had toured in two different spheres and this was the vital point here. Whilst Saxon were continuing to dominate in the UK and Europe, Def Leppard had taken the USA by storm (due to their excess of shows there) and were set to become the biggest British heavy thing there since the days of Led Zeppelin, and the band had also done themselves an even bigger favour by embracing the ultimate marketing tool back then in MTV! Therefore Saxon had missed the opportunites that Def Leppard had been afforded there, but the Power & the Glory was still an album that was recorded with the American market mostly in mind, rather than being a straight up metal album of choice by the band. This meant the album was recorded in the USA, Atlanta to be exact and for the album’s polished production (even though All Music states the album sounds like it was recorded in a large tin can) the band used the services of Jeff Glixman, who produced all those early classic Kansas albums. He had now cut his teeth with something harder with Gary Moore, so on the face of it Jeff Glixman fitted the type of album that Saxon wanted to record here. As an album Power & the Glory sounds from its first track the title cut “Power and the Glory” like a band that have that veteran and more mature feel to them, as the song plays like a defined metal cut that revolves around a balanced display of vocal prowess and heavy metal riffing, in many ways an archetypal metal track of excellence. They follow a similar vein on a song like “Warrior” which is highlighted by its impressive mid-song guitar solo. The band do the whole dark ballad thing well on “Nightmare” and again Biff Byford’s vocals propel the whole thing along. The showpiece track on the album is the album closer “The Eagle Has Landed” named after the previous live album and also the band’s usual logo on their previous albums. The song harks back to the epic days of Led Zeppelin in the mid-1970s largely because it has that aura about it. The band stay true to their beloved biker themed tracks with “Redline” and cover speed metal on the intro to “This Town Rocks” and then splash it around the rest of the song. Not everything though comes across as well as it should, as the ET based “Watching the Sky” could’ve been better and its following track “Midas Touch” falls into the same category here, despite being more uplifting and with better riffing than the previous song. Despite the album’s criticism from various quarters, it was included in Rock Hard’s The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time, a fact I certainly won’t disagree with as this is always the kind of epic metal that I really dig and because this album is a true heavy beast of burden for those in the know.

Biff Byford- Vocals
Graham Oliver- Guitar
Paul Quinn- Guitar
Steve Dawson- Bass
Nigel Glockler- Drums

Production- Jeff Glixman

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