There have been triumphs (classic albums such as Strong Arm Of The Law) and some missteps (an appearance on a ‘career-relaunching’ documentary) but the Barnsley boys are back to something approaching their bombastic best on new album Sacrifice (UDR). It’s more than 30 years since Saxon emerged as a leader of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Aidan Coogan’s confessional yelps and howls of grungy, good-time desperation are buoyed along by the battering-ram rhythm section and brother James’s relentless riffery. His badly scarred torso appears on the artwork for their album of perfectly captured nihilistic angst and the frantic energy of youth. The result is a slab of heroic, chest-beating Scandi-metal.ĭublin quartet Wounds promise great things, although their debut album, Die Young (IATDE), almost didn’t happen after guitarist James Coogan was injured in a fall from a fourth-floor balcony and told he’d never play again. The assault begins with the percussive battery of Spectrum Of Eternity but it’s leavened throughout with lyrical, duelling guitars (This Momentary Bliss) and huge, life-affirming choruses (Tongue).
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