Louder Noise recently interviewed Biff Byford, the long working frontman of the famous NWOBHM band Saxon, about his opinions on how heavy metal music has changed since his band’s commercial peak in the early-mid 1980s. Some of his insights are fairly obvious (the return of vinyl, fashion trends have changed, new genres); although others are more interesting – for instance, he mentions that Saxon experimented with early digital recording methods even earlier in their career. Building off the previous interview we linked featuring Steve Wilson, you could begin to make a case that many professional, successful metal musicians are particularly interested in keeping abreast of aesthetic trends in the genre. You’d need more evidence to back that up properly, but the local corollary that applies is that the composition process need not change as much with time.

Tags: aesthetics, biff byford, interview, mainstream metal, NWOBHM, saxon