Full and fair disclosure: when I was growing up, as most of you know, my tastes were limited and so was my money, so there weren't all that many albums I could buy, which means there was a finite number of albums that really impressed me. This leaves me in something of a quandary, as I find one of the ones that did has already been reviewed but not for Metal Month, so in that spirit I'm going to reprint the odd review here if it's relevant to this section. Being who I am, I couldn't just do that and not say anything and hope nobody would notice. No, I had to create a whole new logo for this. And here it is.
Everyone has heard and knows that one of the major bands that got me into Metal, other than Maiden, was Saxon, and while last year I featured
Wheels of Steel and this year could have put in any of their early eighties material, I chose this one, not so much because of how good it is --- it isn't --- but because it perhaps showed at the time that the band were beginning to run a little out of steam, and this would be one of the albums that would sort of nudge me away from Metal for a while and more towards the burgeoning neo-progressive rock music that was coming up with my second-favourite band, Marillon, leading the way.
Even despite its faults though, and if for no other reason than that it
is a Saxon album, and they being synonymous with my initial discovery of and love of the genre, this has to be considered part of
Originally posted July 27 2012
1983 saw the release of Saxon's fifth album, as the NWOBHM began to burn itself out, leaving behind some massive piles of cinders, and a few hardened and tempered weapons who would be the mainstay of the metal scene in the eighties and nineties. Saxon of course fell into the latter category, and this album, their biggest selling, was the first to break them in the USA.
Power and the glory --- Saxon --- 1983 (Carrere)
The first album to feature new drummer Nigel Glocker, the sticksman wastes no time establishing himself and setting his mark on this album from the opener, and title track, which rocks along and is a great headbanger, Biff's voice a little less rough and ragged as he began to find his true sound. I suppose if there's one negative thing you could say about Saxon it's that they were unadventurous, as much of each album sounds like the rest, and this,
Strong Arm of the Law and
Denim and Leather sort of blend together on occasions. But then again, you could also interpret that as the band finding what works, and sticking with it. Sometimes the fans don't want experimentation, don't want change: they know what they like, it works and they want the band to stick with it. Saxon certainly did not disappoint in that regard.
“Redline” is yet another motorbike-themed song, boogieing along with a great southern rock beat somewhat reminscent of “Hungry years” from
Strong arm of the law, while “Warrior” pushes in on Manowar's territory, elbowing the Americans aside and showing how it should be done! Great rolling drumbeat from Glocker, hard and fast guitars from messrs. Oliver and Quinn, some great steaming solos and a powerful vocal from Biff. There's something of a change in style then for “Nightmare”, which has almost AOR overtones, though it's still very heavy. Very melodic, could have been good radio fodder. Maybe.
There's nothing outside-the-box though about “This town rocks”, as it powers along on rails of steel, striking sparks as it thunders along, and “Watching the sky” keeps things fast and heavy, with “Midas touch” slowing things down in an almost Iron Maiden ballad style
a la “Children of the damned”, with some lovely blues guitar, sliding into a great heavy solo, and finally “The eagle has landed” takes us to the close of the album, with a superb slow cruncher opened by an almost three-minute instrumental, Biff's vocals double or echo-tracked to make them sound a bit psychedlic and weird. It makes a powerful finale to the album though, and in the best tradition of Dio it's a real power stormer.
TRACKLISTING
1. Power and the glory
2. Redline
3. Warrior
4. Nightmare
5. This town rocks
6. Watching the sky
7. Midas touch
8. The eagle has landed
Like I said earlier, this is where I stopped buying Saxon albums, as my tastes began to mature towards more progressive rock and drift away from metal, with bands like Marillion and Pallas coming through, so I really don't know what their releases after this album were like. Fact is, though
Power and the glory had broken Saxon in the hard-to-crack USA, subsequent releases, paradoxically more polished and commercialised for the US market, failed to capitalise or improve on that success, and only the next two or three showed any signs of charting, and all in the lower end of the US charts. In the UK, things were just as bad, as fans over this side of the water reacted badly to the “Americanised” Saxon, with album sales suffering. The heady days of the early 80s, when they had enjoyed top ten or twenty positions with their albums for a period lasting about four years, seemed well and truly over.
But chart success is not necessarily the measure of a band, and certainly not a metal one, and Saxon continued churning out albums. They just did it without my involvement. Even now, I have heard the odd album but have never been that totally impressed. It's not that they let me down, or I feel they did, or even that their sound changed that radically, but sometimes, like with Dio, once you lose the initial impetus it's kind of hard to get back. It even happened with Maiden: after
Brave New World, with the euphoria of Bruce's return wearing off, I found subsequent releases not really up to scratch. Of course, this year changed all that, but that's a story for later in the month.