Like Phantom, I never really got what it is that draws people to Saxon. I understand that as a part of the NWOBHM, they embodied the "working man" sort of spirit, playing, as WatchMojo aptly put it, "meat and potatoes heavy metal". The problem is, I don't like meat and potatoes. Meat is often too dry for my taste and plain boiled potatoes are one of my list favorite foods. I like something with more style, something that's a little more dressed up, so to speak. I can dig a song like "Princess Of The Night", but it isn't one I'll come back to often because there are more exciting bands out there from the same era - Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, etc. But to each their own; this just isn't a band I can connect to on an emotional level.
So going into Destiny, I was less-than-enthused, particularly after reading some of the previous posts. Surprisingly, I did not dislike this album. If you want the long and short of it, it's a solid release. Hopefully you want a bit more of an explanation, because I'll give it to you anyway.
I get why Kalata likes this album. It is an undeniably '80s release. Quite frankly, many parts throughout feel as though they're '80s pop, beefed up for a metal audience. Not surprising that said audience would feel disgruntled by it. As LC said, the hallelujah choruses are a dime-a-dozen, and a lot of the songs have a very similar style to them. Not an inherently bad thing, but it does hold the record back somewhat.
On the subject of those choruses, I actually don't think they're all that bad. Some of them are catchy, fun, and enticing. For example, "I Can't Wait Anymore" and "For Whom The Bell Tolls" start off their choruses quite well. "How long must I stand out in the cold? Can't you see the writing's on the wall?" and "How many children must die on the wall?" are pretty awesome. My issue is that they don't quite complete them well. The latter song is unfortunately stuck in second gear too much throughout and that undermines an otherwise cool subject matter, that of the Berlin Wall. For the former song - one of the album's two ballads - I'm left a bit disappointed because the lyrics are absolutely stale and Biff doesn't sell them.
That's another thing I don't really care for here - the vocals. Biff is strong enough for a band like Saxon, but without a truly electrifying frontman like Halford, Dickinson, hell, even Di'Anno, it's hard to really grasp the vocals. He's like the UK's version of Udo, but without being truly interesting like the Accept frontman is. It's mostly when the backing singers come in for the choruses that I get sucked into the songs.
With that said, he does do a very good job with the album opener, a cover of Christopher Cross's "Ride Like The Wind". I can get this one more, it feels like the sort of song I'd expect from a band like Saxon. My one issue is that they make it about a minute longer than it needed to be, but the chorus is good enough to make up for a lot of that. The other song I thought was very good was "S.O.S.", which is also probably my favorite song on here. The lyrics, discussing the ill-fated voyage of the R.M.S. Titanic, aren't very exemplary, but Saxon manage to make it an enjoyable listen, more involving than a lot of the songs on here.
The one oddity of the record is "Song For Emma", which is firstly a pretty bad title (who is Emma? why does she matter?), and secondly... the album's other ballad. I actually enjoyed listening to the song as a whole, but the lyrics are for sure stuck in that '80s sort of style and thus undermine what they were going for. The rest of the album is nothing more than rockers that are decent in the moment, but don't really stick with you. "We Are Strong" is the album's lowpoint, nothing terrible but it just feels so paint-by-numbers it's unreal. "We are strong, we will survive," is the same sort of song that many metal bands were writing at the time, with some more successful endeavors than others. "Red Alert" is the band's "Smoke On The Water", written about Chernobyl, and while the subject matter is interesting, the song kinda isn't. If this is typical Saxon fare, then I don't really dig it.
So to answer LC's original question... well, yeah. I haven't been won over to the Saxon fanbase with this record. While Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, even Def Leppard were all going places and doing interesting stuff with their music, Saxon stayed run-of-the-mill, at least for me. You listen to Somewhere In Time and Hysteria, two albums stuck within the context of the '80s. You've got the synths, you've got that unique sound that everyone was trying to get at, and so forth. They're undeniably '80s releases. However, SiT is undeniably metal, and Hysteria is unabashedly hard rock with pop leanings. Destiny just feels like pop turned metal, and while I can enjoy listening to it, it's not a very noteworthy release in the wider spectrum of music.
