Helm wrote:I think it's that Saxon never strived to be exceptional themselves, even. They were content writing some - sometimes killer - material but they didn't seem interested in infusing it with Heavy Metal Extremity.
True. However, at a certain point - in the very early 80s - they were pushing the envelope as much as other bands to make some of the more "extreme" metal around. "Machine Gun" (what double bass!) and "Princess Of The Night" were almost thrashy for their time (I'm not saying they were VENOM, but they were energetic). It's no wonder early thrash bands took influence from them.
They just didn't follow these tendencies in some of their songs and modernize. They got more and more "stadium rock" bloated instead...
I agree and I don't think they should have modernized at all actually. I mean, them not becoming huge was probably something they came to terms and decided to stick to the stadium thing because they liked playing live the most, I'd guess. Personally if I felt I wasn't pushing the envelope and myself anymore with my compositions I'd just stop writing (Heavy Metal, at least), but then again, it's a different time, I don't go on tour and I don't live a rock n' roll lifestyle either.
Saxon would of been bigger but they released a couple of "sell out" albums at a critical part of there career...Alot of NWOBHM bands decided to Americaize there sound, which is counter intuitive since the basis of all good metal came from the 1st and 2nd waves of the major label artist and the NWOBHM.
I do believe Iron Maiden was everyone's favorite NWOBHM band, and hurt all the contenders and pretenders. To bad so many bands looked at Def Leppard "Pyromania" as a way to model there song-writing after.