SAXON singer BIFF BYFORD says “everything is clear” in his cancer battle
29-01-2026
British heavy metal legends SAXON have completed work on their 25th studio album for a tentative late 2026 release.
On Tuesday (January 27), SAXON frontman Biff Byford released a video message via social media in which he said: “We’ve finished the album now. (Longtime SAXON producer and JUDAS PRIEST touring guitarist) Andy Sneap‘s finished mixing the album, the new album. So, you’re gonna be hearing about that over the summer, I’m sure.”
Byford also offered an update on his fight against bowel cancer, saying: “I’ve got some new news on the operation. (It’s been) six months now since my cancer operation, and I had a CT scan and everything is clear. So that’s good news after the op, so there’s nothing come back. So that’s really good.”
SAXON‘s upcoming LP will be the follow-up to “Hell, Fire And Damnation”, which came out in January 2024 via Silver Lining Music.
Last October Biff Byford has shared a new video message in which he offered an update on his battle with bowel cancer. He said: ”Hi, it’s Biff here from SAXON. I wanna give you an update. So, yeah, I’ve done the chemo now. And, yeah, I’m gonna be getting fit now, ride the bike. I’m doing some vocals for the new album and, yeah, rehearsing for the (SAXON U.K. tour), which starts in Belfast. — I think it’s on the beginning of November, 3rd or the 4th of November. We’re gonna be doing the ‘Wheels Of Steel’ album complete, obviously, in the set, with a lot of other songs as well, obviously. Udo (Dirkschneider and his band DIRKSCHNEIDER) is gonna be doing ‘Balls To The Wall’, the ACCEPT album, a brilliant album. So he’s gonna be doing that completely. I think TYGERS OF PAN TANG in Newcastle are gonna do a special setlist. And we’ve got a new band called UNTAMED SILENCE with us on two shows, Manchester and Sheffield. So, yep, it’s gonna be great. We’re looking forward to it, and we’ll see everybody there. A few tickets left in some shows, so get your tickets bought, and come on. Peace and quiet.”
Watch the previously released “1066” below.
Saxon’s Biff Byford says – “A totally British themed song, the massive invasion… In fact, it was the end of the Saxons really, so I’m singing about the demise of the Saxons. I did a song with Amon Amarth a while back called ‘Saxons and Vikings’ which was about the end of the Vikings in England and the rise of the Saxons, so I thought I may as well do a song about six-seven hundred years later when William the Conqueror comes over and nobbles the Saxons.
We’ll be playing the song on the Hell, Fire And Steel tour next month, which is gonna be fantastic.”
The song was written by and credited to the band’s member Peter Byford and Brian Tatler.
Watch the previously released official lyric video for “Witches Of Salem” below.
“Hell, Fire And Damnation” is an album which sees SAXON investigate all areas of history and mystery amidst ten of their most confident and thunderopowerful songs yet. In “Witches Of Salem”, lead singer and founding member Biff Byford explores the unjust condemnation of the women victimized at the Salem witch trials and the sheer bigotry and mass hysteria prevalent at the time.
“This is an American story, but the witch trials started in Scotland, spread into England and across the sea to the colonies in America. Those poor women in Salem,” explains Byford, “they weren’t ‘witches’ more than just unfortunate women, really, blamed for everybody’s ailments… whether your horse died, or the milk went sour, they blamed women. Maybe because they were jealous of them, or maybe it was because some guy had made some advances and she’d told him to piss off, so he’d declare that she was a witch. And once a person was declared a witch, I don’t think there was any way back from that; very few of them were found innocent.”
Produced by Andy Sneap (JUDAS PRIEST, EXODUS, ACCEPT) and Byford, with Sneap mixing and mastering, “Hell, Fire And Damnation” strides the perfect line between confident, current power, and gloriously irreverent flexing of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal muscle which SAXON co-created.
“I think this album’s one of the best he’s done sound-wise, and he’s done a lot of albums,” Biff declared. “It has a really raw, vibrant sound… if you compress the total time making this album, it was four weeks tops… you can hear everything brilliantly, nothing’s overcomplicated, nothing’s over compressed. The guitar sounds are fucking immense, they’re just great, raw guitar sounds. And we haven’t done a lot of overdubbing on there, it’s just playing. I really, really like it.
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