Alan Dixon from Canada's The Metal Voice spoke to Saxon's Biff Byford in Montreal Quebec, Canada on October 4 2017 as the band was co-headlining their second half of their North America tour with UFO. When asked about their new album Thunderbolt "Will be released January 21, 2018 I think. Which is not too far away. Andy Sneep finished mixing it yesterday, the Art work is ready. I'm just doing all the credits now for the album cause that is my job as Executive Producer." "The musical direction is going to sound like pretty much Battering Ram and Sacrifice, not going to change drastically." When asked about the song dedicated to Lemmy on the new album Thunderbolt "There is a song dedicated to Motorhead, early Motorhead, when we toured with them in 1980. But yeah it's about Lemmy basically. The Bomber tour. Lemmy was the MAD MAX of Rock and Roll, he was a good mate." When asked about the Las Vegas shootings and how it affects bands touring and if they are doing anything differently "No not really, security is stricter, especially over in Europe, they search people when they come in, we all have to be visual, we can't stop living can we?" When asked if Saxon ever toured with Ritiche Blackmore's Rainbow in the early days "We toured America with 'I Surrender' tour, Rainbow, with Joe Lynn Turner and we did tour gigs with the other guy , Graham Bonnet but Ritchie Blackmore kicked us off the tour for going down too well. But we were at the point where we were really, really happening and we were sort of burning the audience out and he kicked us off the tour. We got to Wembley Arena and Blackmore said you are not on the tour anymore. We're like why? Why do you think? "They were great Rainbow they just didn't understand us, we were like a bunch of Punk Metalheads, hard rock guys. "
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