I can’t remember the first time I saw Saxon but they were one of the bands like Motorhead and Maiden, UFO, Priest and Hawkwind that I would catch whenever I could. There was an honesty about British Rock in the early to mid eighties before MTV and aquanet took the limelight away and enticed a few to dabble with commerciality. Saxon was and still is a huge influence on so many and a band that remarkably are still making great music regularly 45 years after their debut.
Now here comes number 24 (that’s a career average of an album less than every two years) and out of those 24 there was only one that I didn’t really care for. This one starts out on the right foot with the legendary Brian Blessed a man born in Mexborough just a few miles from Barnsley (about the same distance in fact as Biff’s birthplace Skelmanthorpe.) narrating the opening ‘The Prophecy’ in his booming voice.
It’s a great way to start any album but when it smashes into the title track ‘Hell, Fire And Damnation’ (the longest song on the album) it’s made all the more compelling. By the end of that opener, your jaw drops with anticipation… It’s always hard to up the ante when you’re on the top of your game but incredibly even though Saxon’s last two releases ‘Thunderbolt’ and ‘Carpe Diem’ have been shot through with quality ‘Hellfire and Damnation’ has just upped to ante again.
This is an album that gets the balance just right between casting a glorious look over the shoulder and creating new classics for tomorrow’s listeners. ‘Madame Guillotine’ really gets the blood pumping (Biff tells me the riff came from new man Brian Tatler) and ‘Fire and Steel’ has echoes of vintage Motorhead. The effect of those first three out of the gates is as strong as anything Saxon has put out this millennium. And we’ve all of course heard what comes next – the lead single ‘There’s Something in Roswell’ a song with a wonderful groove that’s destined to be played to huge crowds. This is Saxon at their finest.
Biff always looks to history for inspiration and always tells a great tale, and ‘Kubla Khan and the Merchant of Venice’ is another classic to add to a long list. Oe thing that will strike you about this new album is how great Biff sounds throughout, I asked him this week what he put that down to and he basically advised staying off the shorts and not pushing too hard (interview up next week) – whatever it is, it works! And when you couple that with Andy Sneap’s production you can’t go wrong!
‘Pirates of the airways’ casts an affectionate look back at the days of NWOBHM and sounds authentically 80’s Metal; whilst ‘1066’ dips again into history to paint another great picture to adorn a thundering song with a stellar breakdown and killer guitar work from Scarratt and Tatler.
Interestingly two of my favourites close the new record. First ‘Witches of Salem’ which rides a great groove and eases the foot off the pedal before the frenetic pace of ‘Super Charger’ lets fly again to take us into the sunset on the back of a wickedly wild twin guitar attack. If you’re going to go out then go with a song like that!
Saxon have been running hot these last few releases and rather than be content to watch it burn they’ve only gone and thrown more fuel on the fire! Quite possibly Saxon’s best album since the turn of the millennium!
8.5 / 10