Artist: Saracen
Genre(s):
Rock
Discography:
Vox In Excelso
Year: 2006
Tracks: 12
Derbyshire's Saracen were a hard, verging on progressive, rock ensemble that became wrongly associated with the New Wave of British Heavy Metal -- as much due to the timing (1981) of their self-released debut album, Heroes, Saints & Fools, as for their leather jackets and handlebar mustaches. Having said that, the band never tried and true to overtly latch onto the movement's coattails, and were all fine musicians in their possess right, in particular vocaliser Steven Bettney, world Health Organization possessed a rich and powerful voice. Completed by Robert Bendelow (guitar), Richard Lowe (keyboards), Barry Yates (bass), and John Thorne (drums), Saracen earned an other clientele from influential Friday Rock Show presenter Tommy Vance, world Health Organization invited them to record a few wireless sessions and helped bolster their commercial prospects as they readied new single "No More Lonely Nights" in 1982. This, along with subsequent releases for the Neat label (the Change of Heart album and "We Have Arrived" single -- both 1984), showed the mathematical group moving in a far more commercial direction, toward the hook and synth-laden post-prog AOR of a Kansas or Magnum, to be precise. Again, not that thither was anything faulty with this, leave off for the sad reality that Saracen (now tweaked to feature film guitar player Haydn Conway, bassist Jason Gardner, and drummer Danny Spencer) had little hope of future in that scene of action while sign-language to metal-specialized Neat. The group made it to one more Friday Rock Show school term before its members vanished from sight, with only Conway resurfacing in 1996, as a member of Son of a Bitch, also featuring tierce ousted members of Saxon.
