Produced by Jeff Glixman
Released: 1983
Saxon was one of the leading bands of the so-called NWOBHM in the early 1980s with the three albums prior to this one making them on par with Iron Maiden, Def Leppard and Motörhead. By the time of Power and the Glory, however, all of those bands had gone to the next level and Saxon needed something to take them there as well. Bringing in an experienced and well-respected producer the way that Maiden and Leppard had done should have helped, but Saxon let themselves down by not really coming up with any new ideas.
The title track starts the album in true style, a big, heavy anthemic metal rocker with all the band in fine form. "Redline" is almost as good but suffers from being too much like "Motorcycle Man" but not as memorable. Unmemorable applies to much of the rest of the tracks too, and if they do stick out it's usually for the wrong reason. "Nightmare" has a commercial melodic rock aspect to it that hints at the direction Saxon was to go from this point and "This Town Rocks" is so cheesy no pizza should be without it, a track that was written with live shows in mind that sounds completely lame on a studio album. Finally, "The Eagle Has Landed" tries to be for this album what "Hallowed be Thy Name" was to The Number of the Beast, but the performance sounds phoned-in and it ends up being flat and boring. It's almost as if Saxon decided they needed a big epic track to finish the album, but just couldn't be bothered enough to pull it off properly.
Power and the Glory never really scales to very great heights and in the end comes off as an album the band threw together to try and stop them from falling behind the others. It failed.
- Power and the Glory
- Redline
- Warrior
- Nightmare
- This Town Rocks
- Watching the Sky
- Midas Touch
- The Eagle Has Landed
Rating: 55%
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