Asaf Sirkis & The Inner Noise boldly go where fusion only hesitantly put out the odd foot before, and where prog rock could at best dream of going had it dared to. The music is vibrant, vital, exciting and fresh and even manages to surprise. One of these surprises is its wonderful accessibility and immediacy. "Inner Noise" has to be essential in any modern jazz and modern classical collection at the very least.
Although they will likely never retrieve the same commercial relevance they enjoyed in the early '80s, New Wave of British Heavy Metal standard bearers Saxon continue to do their legacy proud as they move through their third decade of recording activity. 2007's The Inner Sanctum is the group's seventeenth studio album, the eighth since renouncing their lost weekend as hapless hair metal wannabes in the late '80s, and their first in ten years to feature returning longtime drummer Nigel Glockler, whose famously busy hands and feet appear to have lost nothing to age (almost suspiciously so, in fact)…