Kaptain was heavily into WASP and Thin Lizzy at the time of writing for Above The Law, so he brought rock 'n' roll and sleaze to the album. Then we jammed the tracks, punked them up, drank some cold ones, and got rough, the Salute way! With a lot of the lyrics, Kaptain chose old-school renegade / tough street-style talk, Boss Rocker Lynott style. It fitted with the quickness and rush of the tracks... worked a treat.
- Swine / Salute interview, Zero Tolerance
This velvet prowler needs to sheathe some dirty meat...
On this day in 2007, SALUTE unleashed their debut, Above the Law. A summer rocker followed by the darker The Underground in 2009. They've since released splits with OCCVLTA and TANGORODRIM.
The sound on Above is good, it fits the mood of the album. Its true, the U.G sound has a'lot more depth, more weight! We wrote a much better record than Above, more mature and rounded. Swine wrote the majority of this one where as I wrote most of Above, I tend to lean toward writing the rockers where he writes the pumpers.
- Kaptain / Salute interview, cp zine
The album was an early Band of the Week selected by Fenriz, and led to them appearing at the 2010 Live Evil festival in London:
...and as i before have said about this band - if you don't like SALUTE you probably have a truckload of extra chromosomes. and if that sounds positive, you're out taking a long walk on a short pier, my friend.
- Fenriz, Band of the Week, March 2009
The response was all positive. Even if its a bad review its good anyway, as it means the reviewer hasn't got a fucking clue!!!! We didnt know what the response would be like at all and we're satisfied with the album as a first proper release. Again, it was true to us at the time. There is not fake striding on there!!!
- Swine / Salute interview, Grind the World, 2009
Above The Law was all one big psycho week of recording with a tonne of beer, which was great but pretty tiring!!
- Swine / Salute interview, Nocturnal Cult, 2010
Years ago the name was Vanguard. That was when we first started writing any kind of music. Everything's changed since then and the name was pretty crap, so it needed to hit the trash. Basically, we have spent, and still spend, so much of our time and money searching and listening to music, especially heavy rock, that we wanted a name that paid homage to the years of metal and the old trade, so Salute fitted. Salute the old bastards!
- Swine / Salute interview, Zero Tolerance
