Saxon - Destiny

Details :

• Year of release : 1988
• Label : EMI EMC 3543
• Review format : vinyl

1988’s Destiny is an often overlooked Saxon album that fosters much divided opinion amongst fans. Much more polished than their early successful nwobhm period and more melodic that the heavier output of recent years it gets a hell of a savaging on allmusic for instance. For this album from Barnsley’s finest the unique voice of Biff Byford is joined by guitarists Paul Quinn and Graham Oliver, Nigel Durham on drums and Paul Johnson on bass so its not quite the ‘classic’ line-up.

A cover song is chosen to open the album and a fairly surprising one at that with a fine stab at Christopher Cross’ Ride Like The Wind. Released as the first single the video for this received quite a lot of airplay on UK television at the time and I’ve always enjoyed the Saxon version of this song and it’s a shame it’s now dropped from the live set. Where The Lightning Strikes is another good track, heavier and with some nice crunching guitar all seems well in the camp until track three. This is perhaps the track that caused most consternation to long time Saxonites as I Can’t Wait Anymore sees them enter the radio friendly rock ballad territory which let’s face it most bands did at this point. A little faster than most ballads (think Whitesnake’s The Deeper The Love as a reference for pace) its not actually that bad a song - it’s just not Saxon! Released as the second single it failed to do much damage to the charts and perhaps as a result their days with EMI were numbered. Calm Before The Storm redresses the balance a little with the story of Biff’s forefathers and the decline of their traditional industries of mining and fishing. Not usual heavy metal territory I’ll grant you but Byford’s from good northern stock and the 80s saw the final killing of these industries which particularly hit areas like the north so there’s some feeling here, however for such strong subject matter the addition of some unneccessary keyboards detract greatly from the song and add to the case for Saxon ’selling out’. S.O.S. covers the Titanic story and follows a long tradition of storytelling tracks by the band although fails to have the impact of say Dallas 1pm or 747. A decent track though that does manage to convey the distaster in just three versus and a chorus which is preferable to that bloody DiCaprio movie version.

The gloomy Song For Emma opens the second side and the radio friendly sheen is very much in evidence once more on a poor track with vague lyrics that fail to convey exactly what Emma’s issues are. For Whom The Bell Tolls succeeds a little better though as The Berlin Wall provides the subject matter as it did for many rock songs back in the eighties. More akin to the old Saxon sound with heavy chugging riffs and a typically british metal solo. We Are Strong has a keyboard motif more akin to Asia and fails to pass the ‘okay song’ mark by some distance but fortunately the screaming Jericho Siren redresses the balance quickly before the excellent Red Alert closes the album telling of Saxon actually on tour on the Russian border at the time of the Chernobyl disaster! A good strong track to close the album and proves they still had a hard rocker in them despite the worrying light material on here.

Summary : A couple of real highs, a few disappointing lows but ultimately not quite the disaster other people might have you think. The advent of the programmable cd player allows this to be turned into a decent six or so track mini-album with Ride Like The Wind, Red Alert, When The Lightning strikes and Jericho Siren in particular proving they still had something. Conversly this albums lack of success probably encouraged Saxon to take the decision to return to a heavier sound that saw them survive the fallow nineties where many more radio-friendly bands called it a day and nearly twenty years after this release they’re actually the subject of a UK TV documentary next month!

If You Listen To One Track Listen To : Ride Like The Wind

Score : 2.5/5