Saxon – Carpe Diem – 2022
Saxon has been around forever at least in my life. Carpe Diem is their twenty-third studio album if I’m counting correctly. They released their first one in 1979 and I was nine years old. No wonder they have always been there for me. They started putting out records before I had a clue what Hardrock or Heavy Metal was. There have been some amazing songs of the years but as a whole, Saxon kinda suffers from the same thing that U.D.O. does. It’s always solid and pretty good, but very seldom really excellent. The songs are pretty good and you get value for your money and the time spent listening but you will very rarely get any masterpiece, at least not on an album level. Carpe Diem is no exception. Besides, isn’t the phrase Carpe Diem outdated by 15 years by now?
Lyric wise we’re in the realm of adventure I think. The album cover very much represents the same thing that the lyrics do. Carpe Dien is definitely one of the hardest efforts from Saxon and the line between Hardrock and Heavy Metal is somewhat blurred. Now, why do we put labels on music? I don’t know. But I guess it’s the human process to sort everything into order. Or perhaps it’s critics that need to categorize everything. I know that I’m certainly guilty of that. If you like what Saxon has done in the past it’s a pretty good chance you will like this as well.