A special new album entitled ‘Unplugged and Strung Up’ has been released by the British heavy metal motorcycle men, Saxon. The veterans re-recorded a selection of songs from their 30+ years in the heavy metal world.
Saxon have been offering new heavy metal material consistently since their formation in 1979. What they do on ‘Unplugged and Strung Up’, however, are new interpretations of classic songs: acoustic versions, symphonic versions, and remixes, recorded over a period of five years. The album was released 18 November 2013 through UDR Music. “It’s fourteen songs of such differing intensity and atmospherics that it’s very interesting to listen to” NWOBHM’s iconic voice Biff Byford comments, in an interview he gave to UDR in support of the new release.
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Not a straightforward unplugged album, though! “With that music, you can’t just pick up a guitar and play it acoustically, because some of it will sound like a joke. So you have to spend quite a lot of time transposing the heavy song into an acoustic version.” Indeed, not all angles fit to all songs, and the band seems to recognize the different needs of different shapes. “For the acoustic [reworking of the] songs, the criterion was that the lyrics and the melody had to be quite interesting for it to work. The orchestrated songs, just a big powerful epic song, really- that was the criterion”.
Saxon are planning to take the whole shebang to the road, too! “After summer, we may well do a tour, we may well take two keyboard players with us and do orchestrated songs within the set”.
See Biff’s full interview here.
