With the odd exception, nobody in 1988 was producing music that was good as what Saxon could be and as far as Saxon goes, it was an improvement over the previous album.
Maidenfans Album Club: Purest of Pain - Solipsis
- Thread starter LooseCannon
- Start date
With the odd exception, nobody in 1988 was producing music that was good as what Saxon could be and as far as Saxon goes, it was an improvement over the previous album.
Welsh Phantom
Ancient Mariner
Being a long time Saxon fan, Destiny has always been one of my least favourite Saxon albums. Definitely not an album to get you into Saxon if you're not already a fan. Simply put, it just doesn't sound like Saxon to me. I think they were trying too hard to break into the American market and changed both their look and their sound to do so. A move which ultimately failed.
And I am kind of glad it did fail, as they returned to their British heavy rock sound soon after.
I remember at the time, both "Innocence is no excuse" and "Destiny" were considered relatively weak efforts among the limited press I read and comments from my mates (with Innocence running out of steam on side 2 and Destiny being too polished)
That said I saw them on both tours and they Friggin rocked. I saw Innocence in Cardiff, Wales and Destiny in the Hammersmith Odeon, London. Without all the studio polish Destiny came across MUCH beefier (although I always disliked the drummer... I thought he looked arrogant. And guess what, a few years back my band at the time supported Oliver/Dawson Saxon and he was on drums. And yes, my initial opinion remains unchanged after talking to him. Although Dawson and Oliver were great, really down to earth)
So Destiny is a weaker album from a band I love, which always puts a positive bias on things. Saxon has had some stellar output both before and after. Some of this centuries output is amazing (just listen to tracks like Call to Arms, State of Grace, The Thin Red Line, Lionheart, Killing Ground, Conquistador, Battalions of Steel etc)
And I am kind of glad it did fail, as they returned to their British heavy rock sound soon after.
I remember at the time, both "Innocence is no excuse" and "Destiny" were considered relatively weak efforts among the limited press I read and comments from my mates (with Innocence running out of steam on side 2 and Destiny being too polished)
That said I saw them on both tours and they Friggin rocked. I saw Innocence in Cardiff, Wales and Destiny in the Hammersmith Odeon, London. Without all the studio polish Destiny came across MUCH beefier (although I always disliked the drummer... I thought he looked arrogant. And guess what, a few years back my band at the time supported Oliver/Dawson Saxon and he was on drums. And yes, my initial opinion remains unchanged after talking to him. Although Dawson and Oliver were great, really down to earth)
So Destiny is a weaker album from a band I love, which always puts a positive bias on things. Saxon has had some stellar output both before and after. Some of this centuries output is amazing (just listen to tracks like Call to Arms, State of Grace, The Thin Red Line, Lionheart, Killing Ground, Conquistador, Battalions of Steel etc)
So it looks like the discussion is drawing to a close, which is fine. I'll leave it open for this weekend and try to post a discussion summary & launch the next album on Monday. If discussion picks back up, we'll let it continue until it ends naturally.
If you haven't already done so, throw some 1990s metal albums at me. This can be from any metal genre as long as the album was released between Jan 1, 1990 and Dec 31st, 1999.
If you haven't already done so, throw some 1990s metal albums at me. This can be from any metal genre as long as the album was released between Jan 1, 1990 and Dec 31st, 1999.
desultory
1-2-3-compassion
Am not very active on here, but I’ll throw in Subhuman Race by Skid Row from gloomy 1995 and cross fingers it gets picked. Cheers
Lampwick 43
Barstool Warrior
I still need to get around to the Saxon album, but I should have some time for it this weekend.
Symphony X - The Divine Wings of Tragedy (1997)
Really interesting choices so far:
| Band | Album | Nominator |
| Blind Guardian | Nightfall Over Middle-Earth | LooseCannon |
| Bruce Dickinson | The Chemical Wedding | Diesel 11 |
| Judas Priest | Painkiller | Kalata |
| Bathory | Hammerheart | Magnus |
| Alice in Chains | Facelift | phantomoftheicarus |
| Iron Maiden | The X Factor | Ariana |
| Aspyhx | The Rack | Dityn DJ James |
| In Flames | The Jester Race | Black Wizard |
| Skid Row | Subhuman Race | desultory |
| Symphony X | The Divine Wings of Tragedy | Lampwick 43 |
Diesel 11
As you scream into the web of silence...
Wow, I guess I'm prepared for that now.
The_7th_one
Ancient Mariner
Megadeth - Rust in Peace
DJ James
A coma stole my name.
Those songs are quite good and I would like to personally add: Witchfinder General, Red Star Falling, Attila the Hun, Hammer of the Gods, Ballad of the Working Man, Battering Ram and They Played Rock and Roll. Also The Thin Red Line was '97 I believe (Unleash the Beast).
Welsh Phantom
Ancient Mariner
Yeah, all of those are great too.
Good point about The Thin Red Line
Good point about The Thin Red Line
Cornfed Hick
Ancient Mariner
Iced Earth - Something Wicked This Way Comes
Would be fun to discuss Nightfall, as well. Particularly since the concept for the album was originally pitched by Hansi as being based on Rheingold rather than The Silmarillion. Could lead to good "what if?" discussion.
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Iced Earth - The Dark Saga
I'm kind of hoping for the Alice in Chains album or Skid Row album, nice to have something different.
So. Saxon - Destiny. Where do I start? I'll start out by saying that it's a piece of shit that should never have been made, and I absolutely fucking hate it. It's a really, really bad album.
What was it that Saxon ever brought to the table in the first place? Three massively popular NWOBHM albums of which one (Denim and Leather) is actually quite good. I'm not terribly fond of its two predecessors, but I do appreciate the popularity, importance and historical value they have. Denim and Leather, cheesy as it is, completed Saxon's musical development. After that, they had nowhere left to go, and you can tell immediately. After 1981, their 80's discography had maybe two or three really good songs, with the likes of Crusader and The Eagle Has Landed. But two things become ever so apparent. 1) Saxon are really just not a very good band, and 2) They were willing to take the road Def Leppard, Tygers of Pan Tang and Raven took, the road that took them from working-class England to Los Angeles. They were willing to sell out.
Destiny comes at the tail end (or shall I just bluntly say it's the arse?) of a string of albums that steadily traded the heavy metal of their early days for synths and multi-layered hymnic choruses. By 1988, Saxon had no trace of denim and leather left in them, it was all spandex and hairspray. As despicable as this may have been for a trve metalhead (and I'm sure that in 1988, I would have hated on them with real passion), it's the actual musical quality that makes Destiny a failure. There is such a thing as good hair metal, played by bands who were really into the sound and knew how to write a proper song. All Saxon did was listen to Californian radio stations and play along without ever ceasing to be those conservative old British farts that they had always been. Biff Byford posing as David Lee Roth is borderline cultural appropriation, he might as well come onstage dressed in a war bonnet or with yellowface, it's not him, it's not his culture, it's just bloody fashion.
Now granted, there is some attempt at real heavy metal on the album, with songs such as Where the Lighting Strikes and For Whom the Bell Tolls, and these are actually the most tolerable ones. Boring and ancient, like "classic" Saxon, but at least not cringeworthy. What's really bad are attempts at power ballads such as I Can't Wait Anymore or Emma's Song, or an awful AOR anthem like Calm Before the Storm. The artificial attempt of adding drama in the chorus with them synth violin riffs is just ridiculous. Nothing, I repeat, nothing about Saxon will ever seem menacing or dramatic. They're just old farts who had a beer to many, always and always. When SOS came on, I half expected it to be an ABBA cover, if only because it wouldn't have altered the sound of the album significantly.
The absolute low point for me is We Are Strong. It sounds like they rummaged through Van Halen's studio one night, stole some fragments of tapes with the first takes of Jump and pieced them together. I have absolutely no idea how they managed to regain even the slightest bit of credibility as a metal band after this song. Memories are short, I guess, and Classic Rock compilations with 747 on them are abundant.
Is there any good music in this album at all? I admit that Red Alert could have been a cool song if its riff would have cut down on complexity and the synths would have been dropped. This way, it sounds like some sort a mutant version of a Saxon classic, which is ironic considering that it's about Chernobyl.
Destiny was the last nail in the coffin of Saxon's mainstream career. It's quite telling that their sales dropped parallel to their developments towards hair metal. After this album, Saxon would never hit the charts in the UK again, even though they returned to their roots and became an NWOBHM zombie that's been haunting us for the last thirty years. To sum it up, Saxon are not a good band and Destiny is a terrible album that is a testament to their lack of quality, an abomination from the eighties and a disgrace to metal.
I nominate Grave Digger - Knights of the Cross.
What was it that Saxon ever brought to the table in the first place? Three massively popular NWOBHM albums of which one (Denim and Leather) is actually quite good. I'm not terribly fond of its two predecessors, but I do appreciate the popularity, importance and historical value they have. Denim and Leather, cheesy as it is, completed Saxon's musical development. After that, they had nowhere left to go, and you can tell immediately. After 1981, their 80's discography had maybe two or three really good songs, with the likes of Crusader and The Eagle Has Landed. But two things become ever so apparent. 1) Saxon are really just not a very good band, and 2) They were willing to take the road Def Leppard, Tygers of Pan Tang and Raven took, the road that took them from working-class England to Los Angeles. They were willing to sell out.
Destiny comes at the tail end (or shall I just bluntly say it's the arse?) of a string of albums that steadily traded the heavy metal of their early days for synths and multi-layered hymnic choruses. By 1988, Saxon had no trace of denim and leather left in them, it was all spandex and hairspray. As despicable as this may have been for a trve metalhead (and I'm sure that in 1988, I would have hated on them with real passion), it's the actual musical quality that makes Destiny a failure. There is such a thing as good hair metal, played by bands who were really into the sound and knew how to write a proper song. All Saxon did was listen to Californian radio stations and play along without ever ceasing to be those conservative old British farts that they had always been. Biff Byford posing as David Lee Roth is borderline cultural appropriation, he might as well come onstage dressed in a war bonnet or with yellowface, it's not him, it's not his culture, it's just bloody fashion.
Now granted, there is some attempt at real heavy metal on the album, with songs such as Where the Lighting Strikes and For Whom the Bell Tolls, and these are actually the most tolerable ones. Boring and ancient, like "classic" Saxon, but at least not cringeworthy. What's really bad are attempts at power ballads such as I Can't Wait Anymore or Emma's Song, or an awful AOR anthem like Calm Before the Storm. The artificial attempt of adding drama in the chorus with them synth violin riffs is just ridiculous. Nothing, I repeat, nothing about Saxon will ever seem menacing or dramatic. They're just old farts who had a beer to many, always and always. When SOS came on, I half expected it to be an ABBA cover, if only because it wouldn't have altered the sound of the album significantly.
The absolute low point for me is We Are Strong. It sounds like they rummaged through Van Halen's studio one night, stole some fragments of tapes with the first takes of Jump and pieced them together. I have absolutely no idea how they managed to regain even the slightest bit of credibility as a metal band after this song. Memories are short, I guess, and Classic Rock compilations with 747 on them are abundant.
Is there any good music in this album at all? I admit that Red Alert could have been a cool song if its riff would have cut down on complexity and the synths would have been dropped. This way, it sounds like some sort a mutant version of a Saxon classic, which is ironic considering that it's about Chernobyl.
Destiny was the last nail in the coffin of Saxon's mainstream career. It's quite telling that their sales dropped parallel to their developments towards hair metal. After this album, Saxon would never hit the charts in the UK again, even though they returned to their roots and became an NWOBHM zombie that's been haunting us for the last thirty years. To sum it up, Saxon are not a good band and Destiny is a terrible album that is a testament to their lack of quality, an abomination from the eighties and a disgrace to metal.
I nominate Grave Digger - Knights of the Cross.
Cat Milk Supreme
Ancient Mariner
Well, now. That is some damning shit. And I have to say that I agree. Having heard the first few albums a couple of times each, I was expecting more of the same but the biggest surprise for me was that I actually listened to the whole thing. I only listened once and all I remember is that there was a cool riff on For Whom The Bell Tolls. Cheesy, contrived muck, the drum sound is a very good representation of the kind of production I hate. Poor album.
I liked Thunderbolt though. Theres a fair amount of filler on there but the good songs are good, probably the best I've heard from the band.
I nominate Pile of Skulls by Running Wild.
I liked Thunderbolt though. Theres a fair amount of filler on there but the good songs are good, probably the best I've heard from the band.
I nominate Pile of Skulls by Running Wild.
D
Deleted member 7164
Guest
Whenever I read about Saxon in the context of "should've made it big like Maiden", I get reminded that even deaf people can have opinions.
SixesAlltheway
Ancient Mariner
Death - Symbolic
Lampwick 43
Barstool Warrior
I'm halfway through Destiny right now, and, this might not make any sense, but I feel the exact same about this album as I do about country music: It can be tolerable in small doses if it's on in the background and I'm sufficiently intoxicated, but its not somthing I would ever choose to put on if I wanted to actually listen to music.