I have been a fan of Saxon for over four decades now, and the best part of that is that they are not a nostalgia act.  

The band keep releasing top notch records and touring the world making them one of the longest running NWOBHM bands out there. Their latest release Hell, Fire and Damnation saw them embark on a co-headlining tour with proto prog rockers Uriah Heep and I was lucky enough to catch their show in Houston.

The crowd was certainly primed and ready for the mighty Saxon as the taped intro of "The Prophecy" elicited a hearty roar from those in attendance.  Feeding off the crowd’s enthusiasm, the band launched into the title track of their latest opus.  Even though some members of the band are in their seventies, they still bring an energy level of a group half their age.  Not letting up for one second, the guys dug deep into their long catalogue and pulled out “Motorcycle Man” from their Wheels Of Steel record.  That album would get revisited again later in the set as many in the crowd were there for their older hits.

Continuing on with material from the eighties, Biff Byford and the boys hit us with a one-two punch of "This Town Rocks" and "Power and the Glory." The former still has that thrashing intro that has lost none of its intensity while the latter is pure chunky NWOBHM glory.  Before I go any further, I need to mention that this is the first tour (in the US) with new guitarist Brian Tatler.  For those of you who are familiar with early NWOBHM, Tatler is the guitarist and founding member of Diamond Head.  I was sorry to see Paul Quinn retire from touring (I’m not quite sure what part he will have with Saxon, if any) but Tatler fit in perfectly on the newest disc and on stage.

I mentioned earlier that Saxon is not a nostalgia act, and they made sure to give their newest material a good showing during the set.  "Madame Guillotine," "There's Something in Roswell," and “1066” all fit in nicely with the older classic material, and I was happy to see a lot of the fans get into this newer material.  With a solid four tunes off the new record, the rest of the set consisted of really old material that didn’t venture into anything past 1984.  History has shown us that 1980 was an amazing year for heavy metal music, so it only stands to reason that Saxon would treat us with a solid trifecta from Strong Arm Of The Law.  Along with the title track, the appropriately titled "Heavy Metal Thunder" and the historic "Dallas 1 PM" proved that the mighty Saxon still has the goods to put on a great metal show.

The epic “Crusader” followed, and it still has all the drama and glory of when it first jumped out of our speakers in 1984.  I have seen Saxon since the mid-eighties, and this track has been a mainstay in their set since its release.  The main part of the show was brought to a close with the call to arms “Denim And Leather” and classic “Wheels Of Steel." Not to disappoint anyone in the Houston crowd, Saxon returned for an encore that continued with their early eighties material.  The rousing renditions of “747 (Strangers In The Night)” and “Princess Of The Night” brought the evening to a close and capped off another great gig.  Saxon is by far one of the last of the NWOHM bands that continues to release music and perform around the world.  The fact that the new material holds its own next to classics from four decades ago shows that there is still plenty of gas left in the Saxon tank.