The Inner Sanctum

This is the seventeenth studio album by the British band, and the first since Unleash the Beast in 1997 to have Nigel Glockler on drums. A limited edition with a DVD was issued alongside it. "Red Star Falling" is about the end of communism in the Soviet Union and "Atila the Hun" about Attila, who came close to destroying the Roman Empire. "If I Was You" asks why an innocent child would become a violent adult, "Let Me Feel Your Power" is about festivals like Wacken, which Saxon have headlined twice, and "I've Got to Rock (To Stay Alive)" is about rock and roll and life. The reception was mostly warm. Eduardo Rivadavia of AllMusic gave it three and a half stars out of five and said Saxon continued "to do their legacy proud as they move through their third decade of recording activity". He called the first three tracks "frantic", the third "jaw-dropping", and praised the "majestic" "Red Star Falling" alongside their earlier "Dallas 1PM" and "Broken Heroes". His conclusion: "although it's certainly not perfect by any stretch, The Inner Sanctum is welcome addition to this band's sizeable discography, and, pound for pound, might just take the crown as Saxon's best album of the early 2000s." The running order here is the original's as printed.