Saxon have released a lyric video for "Witches Of Salem", the fourth single from the band’s 24th studio album, Hell, Fire And Damnation, out now via Silver Lining Music. Watch below.
Hell, Fire And Damnation is an album which sees Saxon investigate all areas of history and mystery amidst ten of their most confident and thunderously powerful songs yet. In “Witches Of Salem”, lead singer and founding member Biff Byford, explores the unjust condemnation of the women victimized at the Salem witch trials and the sheer bigotry and mass hysteria prevalent at the time.
“This is an American story, but the witch trials started in Scotland, spread into England and across the sea to the colonies in America. Those poor women in Salem,” explains Byford “they weren’t ‘witches’ more than just unfortunate women really, blamed for everybody’s ailments... whether your horse died, or the milk went sour, they blamed women. Maybe because they were jealous of them, or maybe it was because some guy had made some advances and she’d told him to piss-off, so he’d declare that she was a witch. And once a person was declared a witch, I don’t think there was any way back from that; very few of them were found innocent.”
Hell, Fire And Damnation is a superlative British heavy metal classic. Biff delivers his richest vocals in years, Nigel Glockler and Nibbs Carter on drums and bass respectively lay down the rhythmic law with bombastic power, and the guitars of Doug Scarratt and Brian Tatler are fresh and fiery, a perfect complement to each other, carrying an overall energy and fury which will have fans salivating. Musically, Saxon bring it all to the table. There's a furious tribute to actual heavy metal in the denim & leather coated super-sprint “Fire And Steel”, a wonderful nod to the NWOBHM's birth in the electric mid-pace “Pirates Of The Airwaves” and the glorious frenetic assault of the title track “Hell, Fire And Damnation”.
Produced by Andy Sneap (Judas Priest, Exodus, Accept and Priest guitarist) and Biff Byford, with Sneap mixing and mastering, Hell, Fire And Damnation strides the perfect line between confident, current power, and gloriously irreverent flexing of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal muscle which Saxon co-created.
Hell, Fire And Damnation is available in a variety of formats and orders can be placed here.
Hell, Fire And Damnation tracklisting:
"The Prophecy"
"Hell, Fire And Damnation"
"Madame Guillotine"
"Fire And Steel"
"There’s Something In Roswell"
"Kubla Khan And The Merchant Of Venice"
"Pirates Of The Airwaves"
"1066"
"Witches Of Salem"
"Super Charger"
"Madame Guillotine" video:
"There’s Something In Roswell" video:
"Hell, Fire And Damnation" video:
Following the release of Hell, Fire And Damnation, a successful European tour alongside Judas Priest and Uriah Heep, Saxon show no sign of slowing down with the co-headline US tour with Uriah Heep named Hell, Fire & Chaos - The Best Of British Rock & Metal, which starts in Fort Lauderdale, Florida tonight, April 23.
All Saxon tour dates and tickets can be found here. Check out a message from Biff Byford below:
