With various changed travel plans for me as far as my Damnation Festival weekend was concerned, it gave me the opportunity to catch Saxon in Manchester instead of Glasgow. Billed as the Wheels of Steel album in full plus songs from the album Hell, Fire & Damnation as well as other Saxon classics, it was one I really wanted to catch.
I had thought that this show was just Dirkschneider and Saxon but we also had an initial support act in the form of Untamed Silence.
Having never heard them before, I was impressed by their blend of classic rock which had a strong groove element in the music which was complemented by the deep resonant vocals of frontwoman Debbie Wade. Untamed Silence were onstage whilst a fair proportion of the crowd were still filtering in but this was a really strong performance which caught the attention as the crowd grew.
As well as Saxon basing their set around Wheels of Steel, Dirkschneider and his band were also giving us a full album performance in the form of Balls To the Wall, the classic 1983 album by German metal pioneers Accept. Udo Dirkschneider was the vocalist at that point in time – and is still considered the classic Accept vocalist by many.
“Balls To The Wall” is also the opening track to the album, a real classic metal anthemic stomp along which could not fail to engage the crowd right from the very beginning. I mean, who doesnT’t want to belt out “You get your balls to the wall man!!! Balls to the wall!”. All while about half a dozen big blow up balls were bouncing around the hall. Most of these burst over the course of the show but one did survive!
“London Leather Boys” continued the sing along and these openers set the tone for the rest of the show as the band worked through the album with “Love Child” and “Turn Me On” standouts for me prior to the more nuanced ending track of “Winter Dreams”. This was a fantastically entertaining slice of classic metal and the perfect way to prepare for the mighty Saxon.
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Is there any other band that has experienced the highs and lows as much as Saxon over the years? On a personal level it’s great to see them packing out theatres again, headlining festivals and producing albums of the quality of Hell, Fire & Damnation. Saxon’s place in the lore and history of metal should be stamped into a massive slab of granite with a steamhammer. And the Wheels of Steel album is central to that.
And on that basis I had just casually assumed that we would get that first and then the rest of the set. But no! Opener tonight was “Hell, Fire and Damnation” from that album. And a great anthemic opener it is too! If that wasn’t good enough then we launch straight into “The Power and The Glory”.
Next up was a bit of a deep cut in the form of “Backs To The Wall” from their debut album and then the title track “Sacrifice” from their twentieth album. How’s about that for covering your back catalogue! “Never Surrender” is more classic Saxon before “Madam Guillotine” again from Hell, Fire and Damnation. And it has to be said even if this is a song from their latest record, “Madam Guillotine” has the feel and quality of a classic Saxon song.
How’s that for you so far? Enough classics? No? How’s about you fill your heads with some “Heavy Metal Thunder” then! Oh, and for good measure “Dallas 1pm”. Just in case your energy levels were dropping a bit.
Phew. All of that. ALL OF THAT and we’ve still got the whole of Wheels of Steel to come!
At which point I’ll skip the chronology of review and jump about a tiny bit. On side 1 of Wheels of Steel, “Stand Up And Be Counted” sits in the middle of three other absolute classic Saxon songs and as such has probably been overlooked over the years. Hearing it live was a real breath of fresh air not only in terms of the music but – a bit like “Never Surrender” – a real reminder of how early Saxon’s lyrical content appealed to a young working class kid in an industrial town.
And then we have “747 (Strangers In The Night)” with its utterly iconic lead riff followed by “Wheels Of Steel” itself, with its big singalong chorus.
What struck me about the songs that form the start of side 2 of Wheels of Steel – “Fire In The Sky”, “See The Light Shining” and “Street Fighting Gang” – is that they all have elements in common – high energy, sections that you could call hard rock, rock & roll even, but also very much heavy metal in parts. It’s like a three song microcosm of the genre of metal coalescing.
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“Suzie Hold On” was always Saxon showing that they had a softer more nuanced side and hearing it live was actually pretty emotional. And then the album set was ended with “Machine Gun”. I haven’t mentioned opening track “Motorcycle Man” as yet because I wanted to cover off these two songs at the one time. Bookending the album, these were the ones at the time that you thought of as fast, heavy and dead metal. Drums really hit home in both and Nigel Glocker absolutely nails the double bass parts in “Machine Gun” tonight. The guitars absolutely scream at the end of “Machine Gun” and Biff has screamed throughout.
I would dare anybody to listen to those two songs together and deny that they are proto-thrash metal.
You ever heard the story of how Brian Slagel – founder of Metal Blade records met Lars Ulrich? He saw Lars at a gig in Los Angeles where Lars was wearing a Saxon European tour t-shirt. And from a fan’s perspective, if you were anything like me and you had been listening to Motorhead and Saxon and then Kill ‘Em All comes along… well it’s just a natural progression in terms of heaviness and speed. You lap it up. Well, I certainly did.
Manchester roars Saxon back on for encores. Firstly, “Denim And Leather” – the great battle hymn of the NWOBHM, then “And The Bands Played On” the great serenade for Castle Donington and the early days of Monsters Of Rock. And then it’s “Princess Of The Night” to close the show. Because of course it is.
At this point it feels like Saxon are re-cementing their place as titans of the metal genre. Sure they’ve lost their way on occasion but the influence they had from that iconic early 80s period can’t be understated. And in terms of their centrality to metal culture… well put it this way, the following couple of days at Damnation, looking around at the various patch covered cut offs… ok, ok, sigh… “battle jackets” (sigh) on show what other words come to mind than, “Denim and leather brought us all together, it was you that set the spirit free”!
