Preaching From the Pews: An Axe

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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

Cherry 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.

God is in the TV is an online music and culture fanzine founded in Cardiff by the editor Bill Cummings in 2003. GIITTV Bill has developed the site with the aid of a team of sub-editors and writers from across Britain, covering a wide range of music from unsigned and independent artists to major releases.