Despite the title of this Swedish retro band’s first release, this is not a live album performed in space. It would be cool…but no, it’s not even Live. Though the album’s basic sound IS from a time when having landed on the moon, Mankind still had an obsession with space and UFO’s…and “Obsession” era UFO is just what the first track reminds me of! Ha! Seamless eh? Well it would have been, but actually it sounds more like ‘Rock Bottom’ from the “Phenomenon” album four years previous…and the singer doesn’t sound at all like Phil Mogg, much more like very early Rob Halford…and doesn’t really sound at all like UFO by the chorus. So…not seamless at all then…bugger…
Moving swiftly on…
…The great thing about being a retro band is that you can choose a quite specific era…or it chooses you based on your natural sound. And we are talking quite specifically Hard Rock/Fledgeling Metal from 1974-77. Granted, it’s mainly Judas Priest from this era, but there are also good dollops of UFO, Budgie and even Blue Oyster Cult (‘Godzilla’ and ‘Astronomy’ – that kind of thing). It’s quite a testament to Saturn that any of the tracks on “Ascending (Lost In Space)” could be out-takes from Priest’s “Sad Wings Of Destiny” or “Sin After Sin” – they really have got the sound nailed. So that said, it’s when the band inject other influences that it gets noticed.
Having covered UFO on the musical side of opener ‘So, You Chose Death’, the Budgie similarity is the most obvious on the bluesy grind of ‘Over The Influence’. There’s a slight feel pre-”Killers” Maiden on ‘Last Man In Space’ with it’s twin guitar and lead Bass, but that’s about as much from the mid Seventies as this release really strays…and that’s not much of a stray is it…and it soon entrenches itself back into Gull-era Priest by the middle section. That’s the thing really, the whole album is just so unapologetically, quintessentially early Priest that it’s hard to find any other comparison, because it always seems to lead back to them.
Yet this is no rip off! The band haven’t thought “Oh let’s re-write ‘Victim Of Changes’ or ‘The Ripper’ or ‘Sinner’ or suchlike”. And that’s not only due to “Suchlike” not being a common Swedish phrase, this is – as I said earlier – a collection of eight songs that really could have been there ALONGSIDE those Priest tracks. There’s some serious Downing/Tipton lead-work and riffing on display at times here and very competent song-writing too – there’s some great songs on this album. Saturn are a band in their own right that happen to sound a lot like mid Seventies era Judas Priest and clearly decided that it was no bad thing – which it isn’t. If you hanker after that phase in Priest’s lengthy career then you’ve just got to check this lot out!
Oh, and I now realize that the intro riff on the opening track reminds me much more of Def Leppard’s ‘Wasted’ than UFO, so the start to this review is looking more and more tenuous as time goes on. Ho-hum…
(7.5/10 Andy Barker)
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