Armed And Ready – Kerrang! May 1982 NEIL JEFFRIES

HULL-BASED Salem grew out of the ashes of Ethel The Frog. Two ex-Frogs – drummer Paul Conyers and ‘Tog’ – formed the band in early 1980. ‘Tog’ moved on after a year and the band then expanded to their current five-piece status with Adrian Jenkinson on bass, Paul Macnamara and Mark Allison on guitars and Simon Saxby on vocals.

Gigging widely over Yorkshire with trusty aide Stanley the van. Salem are developing a following from Doncaster to Cleethorpes (the Rock’n’Roll Capital Of The World-ish) with their own brand of metallic rock.

Lyrics are mostly provided by Simon who likes to follow the sword and sorcery themes illustrated in titles like ‘Reach To The Sky’ and ‘The Keeper Of The Keys’. Musical writing duties are generally shared, although classically trained guitarist Paul does the bulk of the arranging. He’s anxious that, rather than relying on simplistic HM, Salem make full use of their twin lead guitars and develop a more demanding ‘heavy melodic’ style with ‘lots of twiddly bits’ (!) There will be no wimp-outs though – drummer Conyers and his Animal Attitude will see to that…

Salem recorded their first demo about a year ago but recently went into the Fairview Studios (where Def Leppard made their first EP) to record two more songs for issue as an independent single.

The record will be a double A-sided disk and contain the above-mentioned ‘Reach To Eternity’ plus ‘Cold As Steel’.