SAXON Comments On CHANNEL 4 Documentary

British heavy metal legends SAXON are taking part in a documentary series that U.K.'s Channel 4 will air in April. The idea for the series is for renowned promoter Harvey Goldsmith to return six acts to "big-time showbiz." His task with SAXON is to get the band a hit single in Britain.

Commented the band in a posting on their web site: "We saw the Channel 4 program. It's not too bad. At the beginning they put us down a lot, making the festival we are playing a bit small, but the billing was great — SODOM, WITHIN TEMPTATION, SAXON, KREATOR, MEGADETH, BLIND GUARDIAN and many more. Maybe Harvey and the Channel 4 lot have never heard of these bands. The film ends up as a success.

"Although they filmed the band for six months, there is very little of this in the film. The central character is obviously Harvey Goldsmith, and they must be investing a lot of money into their new boy. We feel that Kim, the director, and Claudine, who filmed most of the show, were making a great effort to capture the character of the band but we think they got too close to us and got pulled out on the editing. But actually Harvey's motives are to make the band sucessful in Britain, so although the band are taken down before being brought back up by Harvey, this is the central theme of the program, which is acceptable. Although the facts are being presented in a simplistic and manipulated way, we feel from being involved with Harvey we have done tons more promotion in Britain and we would like to thank all the people who also helped who are not on the film."

SAXON's latest album, "The Inner Sanctum", registered the following first-week chart positions across Europe:

Germany: #36
Sweden: #39
Switzerland: #89
UK: #102
UK: #4 (on "rock/metal" chart)

SAXON's "The Very Best Of: 1979-1988" compilation also entered the U.K. "rock/metal" chart at #32.