Review: Saxon

Saxon
“Killing Ground”
(SPV)

Saxon deserves their kudos. They were at the forefront of the British metal invasion, innovative and fearless leaders, but they were run over and over shadowed in popularity by the likes of Judas Priest and Def Leppard. It was my assumption that Saxon folded around this time, but my assumption was wrong. Their discography weighs in at an impressive 20 albums (some live) released throughout the eighties and nineties, and with Killing Ground, their newest purist metal submission to their fans, I can hardly contain my joy. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had my first cup of bitter black life invigorating liquid manna you mortals call coffee or simply because this Saxon album lacks chutzpah, vim, vigor, piss and vinegar or anything with any semblance of the aforementioned qualities. The music is heavy metal by numbers, played by rote, assembled with lack of vision and arranged to cause the least harmful irritation. In other words, it simply makes me want to turn it off, and justifiably so when they have the cliché driven audacity to shout out “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” Maybe this is the reason they won’t stop. Maybe they’re speaking to me with that horrid cliché they call a lyric, saying in the voice of a sixteen year old poor little rich girl, “Hey, Dick. If we died, then you’d be sorry you said all those mean things about our new album, “Killing Ground”. Yeah, I bet then you’d be really, really sorry.”  Well, Saxon, maybe I would be sorry. There’’s only one way to find out.