Where would rock stars be without their little secrets? The legendary history of a band, the magic of their music, and the depth of their lyrics - all this is part of the fascination that a successful act such as Saxon exudes. Naturally, the band members keep the very private moments of their lives to themselves, but their current album, The Inner Sanctum, allows an honest insight into the rather unusual working process that went into the new songs. “The past 12 months were undeniably the most successful year in our career to date, so we knew that it would be a good idea to start collecting ideas and write the songs early,” comments vocalist Biff Byford. “All through the last summer, we used the weekdays between the festival weekends to concentrate on working on our albums. We hired rehearsal rooms in Germany, Spain and England, where we ensconced ourselves for three days during the week, before travelling to the next festival. We’d never gone about things this way before, but as you can see it worked.”

Byford has every reason to be satisfied with the result. “The Inner Sanctum is a typical Saxon recording that kicks off with real heavy metal, followed by a couple of rock’n’roll numbers, returning to metal towards the end,” he describes his group’s new offering, which – between the uptempo numbers, ‘Atila The Hun’ and ´Let Me Feel Your Power’ (which unconditionally lives up to its title), the anthemnic midtempo track ‘Red Star Falling’, the groove rocker ‘I’ve Got To Rock (To Stay Alive)’, reminiscent of the glorious ‘Strong Arm Of The Law’ era, and ‘Going Nowhere Fast’ – covers the whole range of a typical Saxon masterpiece. The brand-new single ‘If I Was You’ has been available as a download since January 26, 2007. As far as Byford is concerned, The Inner Sanctum is on a par with his band’s great classics: “I’d say the album is in the style of Metalhead and Lionheart with a little bit of Solid Ball Of Rock; a number of tracks have an Eighties feel, but at the same time the production is very modern.”