:: Saxon - The Inner Sanctum

Saxon

If there’s one thing you can count on year in/year out, it’s South Yorkshire act Saxon. Emerging out of the N.W.O.B.H.M. (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) scene at the start of the ‘80’s, Saxon has over the last thirty years maintained a respectable following in Europe, without changing too much from the traditional heavy metal sound they helped founder with their hugely influential sophomore effort ‘Wheels Of Steel’ back in 1980. Although Saxon’s career has had its fair share of hits and misses, the band had managed to remain consistent with their last couple of studio efforts, but unfortunately, they faltered a bit with 2006’s live effort ‘The Eagle Has Landed III Live’. Fearing that the band’s last live album might have been a precursor to something a little lacklustre sounding in the studio, I approached Saxon’s seventeenth studio album ‘The Inner Sanctum’ with little in the way of expectations, only to be pleasantly surprised.

The band opens up the album is remarkably strong fashion with the epic ‘State Of Grace’. Combining the group’s traditional metal sounds with more recent power metal influences, the song sounds epic as well as classic, and stands out as one of the album’s really strong moments. The fast paced and thundering duo of ‘Need For Speed’ and ‘Let Me Feel Your Power’ are perfect examples of Saxon’s ability to utilise modern power metal production techniques and influences in amongst their own traditional sound, while the slower paced ‘Red Star Falling’ is another well placed epic that allows the band a breather around a third of the way through the album. ‘I’ve Got To Rock (To Stay Alive)’, the single ‘If I Was You’ and ‘Going Nowhere Fast’ are classic Saxon tracks through and through, while the anthem based ‘Ashes To Ashes’ and ‘Atila The Hun’ are reminiscent of the strength and direction of the powerful opening track. If ‘The Inner Sanctum’ is anything to go by, Saxon is anything but past their prime. With the right mix of old and new influences, and a production that gives the songs a sense of power, ‘The Inner Sanctum’ is solid album without a single filler to be heard. In truth, I don’t think the band haven’t sounded this good since ‘Metalhead’, and that’s saying a lot.