An Axe are a roaring, surf-spattered, noir-shadowed three-piece. A loud, dark take on 1950s pop, jagged post-punk, Nick Cave melodrama, Shadows twang and Roy Orbison croon. Guitar strings bend and howl like a hell-bound drag race as clattering drums call the corpses of a million tide-stolen teens home to their sweethearts, evoking – as Bristol’s Venue Magazine recently put it – “…the Gun Club flick-knife duelling with the Bad Seeds“.
The band started life recording haunted requiems in an isolated crypt in the middle of a bleak Bristol winter, but the departure of a founding member, along with a reawakening of a love of surf vinyl and bombastic Morricone guitars revolutionised their sound and direction. Abandoning the keyboard-anchored melancholia of those early sessions they dove head first into a frenzied new take on a classic sound, marrying it with the sinister undertones of the murder ballad.
An Axe’s live shows are building a reputation for being thunderous and raw, but always suavely decorated and not short of a sense of decorum and seedy style. The band are delighted to have been asked to open for the wonderful Sparrow & The Workshop on their Bristol date at The Louisiana, June 4th.
New single – the double A-side “Destructo!/Cherry” takes the themes established on debut EP Some, When Alone, Cease To Exist by the neck and leads them under seething Blue Velvet lawns to a place where the most suave cat delivers the hardest hit with a smile.
“Destructo!/Cherry” is available to download now from iTunes, or you can stream it below.
Destructo! by An Axe
The forthcoming double A-side single “Love, My Evil/Let Law Be Upheld” will be released online June 2011, and will available from iTunes as well as to stream from the band’s Soundcloud.
