Saxon detail Battering Ram

Saxon will release their 21st album Battering Ram on October 16.

The project is described as boasting “a clinically heavy echo of their glorious NWOBHM sound.”

The follow-up to 2013’s Sacrifice was produced by Andy Sneap at his Backstage Recording Studios in Derbyshire.

Singer Biff Byford says: “This one’s a natural progression from Sacrifice. There’s a bit less rock’n’roll and a bit more ‘heavy’ on it. We wanted to keep focused on a style rather than moving around too much.”

The band recently issued a video for the title track, which features fans rocking out at the barriers during live shows. Byford says he explores a variety of themes throughout the record.

He says: “When I’m writing lyrics I like to switch back and forth between complex things, reality and rock’n’roll. I thought the whole folklore behind The Devil’s Footprint made it great material for a metal song, being that it’s both historic and mythical.

“With Queen Of Hearts I wanted to write something around Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, and it’s about the chess game that happens in the story. I wanted it to have prog-feeling in the way of its ambiance and mood”

Byford continues: “Then you have songs like Destroyer and Hard And Fast which are 80s inspired songs with that modern slant on it. I’m a big fan of Marvel comics, and I wanted to write a song around the character Destroyer, and with Hard And Fast it’s, as the title suggests, about driving fast. I do like to tie the lyric into the song, so if it’s going to be a song about driving fast, well, it has to be a fast, hard song.”

Saxon spent the summer playing festivals across Europe – including the Ramblin’ Man Fair – and will launch a month-long US trek next week in California. The band will perform at the Hard Rock Hell Festival on November 14 as part of a series of winter European dates before appearing as a special guest at Motorhead’s 40th anniversary shows.