Saxon finally took time off from recording albums to tour the UK, and thus got their music across to even more people, and established themselves as one of the major UK metal acts of the time. When their live album,
The Eagle Has Landed, was released the following year, it shot to number five in the album charts, something pretty much unheard of for a metal band. Or any band. They toured with Ozzy Osbourne and again played at Donington, the first ever act to do so twice, tightening their grip on the hearts of metal fans in the UK and further afield.
1983 saw the release of their 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 the three featured here 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.
TRACK LISTING
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
To be fair and honest, 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 and as such it's then hard to pick one. 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. After a rather brief flirtation with commercial metal as they tried to pry open the lucrative American market, they returned to their roots in 1991, after releasing four albums that confused Saxon fans, with
Solid Ball of Rock, with further albums helping to re-establish them as one of the great heavy metal bands. But in 1994 longtime guitarist Graham Oliver was sacked from the band and replaced by Doug Scarratt. In 1997 they released their first album with him, and he has remained with them to this day.
Unleash the Beast - Saxon - 1997 (CMC International)
Truth be told, you can definitely see a huge change in Saxon's direction, as “Gothic Dreams” opens more like something you would expect from Dio, with heavy orchestral sounds, choral vocals, dramatic keyboards (!) in a short instrumental that soon breaks into a monster in the title track. This was also the first time Saxon had attempted a more cohesive album, not a concept but with some recurring themes running through the songs. The vocal harmonies are a lot more to the fore, though the guitars are still fast, hard and heavy, the drumming as tight and powerful as ever. In fact, this is one of Saxon's faster tracks, edging out even some of the stuff on the classic 80s albums.
On “Terminal Velocity” Biff does his best Bon Scott, and there's certainly no sign of the sound having been watered down (although I have intentionally skipped over the US-centric albums; maybe I shouldn't have, but that's how it is) and Saxon sound as heavy as ever, the opening instrumental perhaps having wrong-footed me a little. There's an even heavier style portrayed on “Circle of Light”: no, you wouldn't think Saxon could get any heavier, but there's a very definite shift here towards the more extreme metal that was coming out of the US at that time, the likes of Metallica and Slayer, and perhaps the old masters were finding the pupils had outdone them, and were taking some of their influences?
Another war-themed/political song in “The Thin Red Line”, with some very chunky guitars and a hard-hitting military backbeat, and another in “Ministry of Fools”, in which you can hear the influence of AOR/American commercial metal on Saxon, and I must say yeah, it's very catchy! Heavy organ builds behind an evangelist decrying, uh, just about everything fun, as “The Preacher” gets going, then “Bloodletter”, despite its heavy title, has quite a bit of AOR about it too, especially in the chorus, though the guitars certainly burn!
There are more choral vocals and heavy dramatic elements in the cruncher “Cut Out the Disease”, yet another politically-themed song - seems Saxon have grown up since I last heard them! Nice acoustic intro to “Absent Friends”, the first real ballad I've ever heard from these guys, and it mostly continues in the acoustic vein, although there's a superb and emotional electric guitar solo about halfway through, but it's nice to see Saxon can handle an understated song like this. The album ends, however, as you would expect, on a headshaking, air-guitar-frenzy, rockin' heavy metal screamer, with “All Hell Breaking Loose” bringing
Unleash the Beast to a powerful and
very metal end.
TRACK LISTING
1. Gothic Dreams
2. Unleash the Beast
3. Terminal Velocity
4. Circle of Light
5. The Thin Red Line
6. Ministry of Fools
7. The Preacher
8. Bloodletter
9. Cut Out the Disease
10. Absent Friends
11. All Hell Breaking Loose
And on they go. Saxon have to date released nineteen studio albums, with their twentieth due next year. In the meantime, they've struggled to protect their bandname as a trademark, when ex-members Graham Oliver and Steve Dawson sued for the right to use it, but lost, and been refused permission to play the Dubai Desert Festival, due apparently to offence being taken at some of the lyrics in the
Crusader album. Don't these people know it's only rock and roll, even if they don't like it? But undaunted Saxon have toured the world, building and rebuilding their popularity, and they are still, and likely always be, revered by metal fans as one of the few acts who never truly sold out.
Well, yes they did, but as they came to their senses let's draw a discreet veil over that period in their career, and remember them as they were, and are: true stalwarts of British Heavy Metal.
As Biff himself would say, “Fook yeah!”