Saxon - Denim & Leather

For a brief moment in the early eighties, I became enamored with some of the bands within the category of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. I stole Iron Maiden’s Maiden Japan from the local K-Mart, heeded the advice of a (literally) crazy ADHA kid named Steve Chambers who declared Judas Priest’s Unleashed In The East as one of the greatest albums ever made and, for reasons completely unknown, bought Saxon’s Denim & Leather album.
Saxon, as I discovered from looking at the back cover photo, were a quintet of some of the most ugly men ever to don instruments and rock the shit out of England.
The album received a lot of critical praise during that time and, from my own perspective, the praise was justified. Denim & Leather contains some memorable riffs and enough anthemic themes to please most fans of heavy metal.
The title track is a prime example of this, with its “we-accept-you-as-one-of-us” mantra (“Denim and leather/Brought us all together/It was you that set the spirit free”) while asking rhetorical questions as to why people enjoyed rocking out so much (the drums, the loud guitars, etc.).
Saxon also likes, in descending order, playing live on stage, motorcycles, chicks that keep them “satisfied,” and babes they remember from long ago.
Admittedly, the song lyrics are pretty dismal if you place too much thought in them. Take the song “Midnight Rider” which chronicles Saxon’s tour of the United States. If one follows the cities and states that the band plays according to the lyrics, then someone really should have let the band know that that their itinerary was completely fucked: they went from N.Y.C. to Portland, Maine to Niagra Falls to Canada, back down to Texas, to Nashville, to Chicago and then back down to Baton Rouge. From there, apparently, the tour ended.
But nobody puts lyrics at the top of the list when it comes to metal; it’s the riffage that draws us in. Denim & Leather contains some of the best riffing that came out of N.W.B.H.M., but unfortunately, Nigel Thomas’ production fails to provide Graham Oliver and Paul Quinn any real meat behind their guitar tones. Many of the riffs, as clever as they are, sound tinny and weak; had Thomas worked harder at filling out the sound, Denim & Leather may have been revered outside of the U.K. more than it was.
Of curious note, my vinyl copy of Denim & Leather took a noticeable drop in the volume level immediately after the guitar solo in “Princess Of The Night,” signally a pretty shitty mastering job for the album’s stateside release. I brought it over to a mutual metal friend at the time to see if he also heard it. He did, but he didn’t think it was as great as Motley Crue’s Too Fast For Love. That album provided him with the incentive to move to Los Angeles, get inked, and start his own band before returning to Iowa and cooking for a local eatery.
Saxon, on the other hand, has continued on, primarily around Europe to fairly limited success. They stupidly went on a more commercial direction, alienating a lot of their fans in the process before finally returning back to their core sound and direction.
And their core sound is in fine form on Denim & Leather, despite the silly lyrics and weak production. It remains a strong example of one of Britain’s finest heavy metal albums and one of Saxon’s best offerings.