Heavy metal isn’t rocket science. The genre's fundamental values and sonic staples may have been continually refined and redefined over the last four decades, but its core components remain the same as ever: volume, power, passion and imagination. And that’s where Saturn come in. While metal’s diversity has never been greater, there will always be something exhilarating about hearing a young band channelling the effervescent spirit of heavy music’s founding fathers; adding enough of their own identity to side-step dead-eyed repetition, but always exhibiting a profound love for and understanding of what makes the best music engage, endure and enlighten. Saturn’s debut album "Ascending" encapsulates that idea with exquisitely naturalistic fervour. This is sound of the past, present and future colliding in a shower of riffs, melodies and otherworldly magic.
Drawn from a steady diet of Sabbath, UFO, Budgie, Deep Purple, Rainbow and, perhaps most importantly, the Judas Priest of Sad Wings Of Destiny and Sin After Sin, the Saturn sound is one that declares a sincere and unapologetic debt to the greats of a bygone era, but this is no lazy exercise in retro posturing. Instead, Ascending conjures its own distinctive world of epic grandeur and gritty oomph via the dextrous weaving of ageless, hallowed ingredients and a jolting injection of contemporary exuberance and verve. Songs like Rokktori and Tower Of Terror exude both a deep affinity with the blues and an intuitive grasp of what occurred when metal’s original blueprint mutated into the tougher tirades of NWOBHM.
1. So, You Have Chosen Death
2. Rokktori
3. Over the Influence
4. Leadership
5. Peasant
6. Tower of Terror
7. Last Man in Space
8. Moonstone