Interview: Saxon Frontman Biff Byford Talks About New Album, Recording Techniques, Old School Audio Formats

One of the pioneers of the legendary New Wave Of British Heavy Metal movement of the late '70s and early '80s, Saxon have been consistently unleashing one solid album after another and have played a major role in keeping the spirit of traditional metal alive over the years.

Their 19th studio album, Call To Arms, is further proof of this very fact. After garnering rave reviews in other parts of the world, it hit North American stores on September 27 and is available in digipak and vinyl formats. The digipak version is the one I would suggest to anyone who is starting to listen to Saxon, because the bonus disc consists of the band's Castle Donington performance from 1980. This package gives you a taste of the old-school Saxon in addition to their latest effort.

On September 28, they made a long-awaited return to Los Angeles to play a show at the Key Club. Before they did so, I had the immense pleasure of sitting down with frontman Biff Byford for an interview to talk about this new album, touring, the vinyl format and much more. Watch the 13-minute chat in HD below, and check out the band's official website for more info.

Andrew Bansal is a Los Angeles-based writer who has been running his own website, Metal Assault, since early 2010, and has been prolific in covering the hard rock and heavy metal scene by posting interviews, reviews and pictures on his website -- with the help of a small group of people. Besides being hugely passionate about heavy metal, he is an avid follower of jazz music and recently started a blog called Jazz Explorer to pursue that interest.