Category:Bands:Blood Axis

Blood Axis

 * https://www.discogs.com/artist/49857-Blood-Axis
 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_Axis

Blood Axis is the name under which journalist and author Michael Moynihan and musician and author Annabel Lee compose and release music.

Early Blood Axis (1989-1999)
Moynihan formed Blood Axis in 1989 after touring Japan at the request of experimental music pioneer, Boyd Rice. Moynihan had previously founded Coup de Grace, a multimedia project that produced live performances and cassettes and also released booklets of images and texts, the last of which was Friedrich Nietzsche's The Antichrist.

The first output from the new appellation were two songs, "Lord of Ages" (employing lyrics from Rudyard Kipling's poem on Mithras and "Electricity", which appeared on a German music sampler. These tracks were well received in Europe and were followed by two more songs that appeared on the seminal compilation, Im Blutfeuer.  In 1995, Moynihan released the first full length studio LP, The Gospel of Inhumanity.

The album wedded the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and Sergei Prokofiev with modern electronics. Moynihan implemented a recording of Ezra Pound reading from his The Cantos. He also included lyrics from Friedrich Nietzsche and Longfellow as well as his own to the work. The album begins with a sample from the decisive final sequence of the film The Wicker Man.

In 1997, Blood Axis played a concert for the tenth anniversary of Cold Meat Industry, a Swedish record label. The performance was later recorded, remastered, and released as BLOT: Sacrifice in Sweden.

Contemporary Blood Axis (2000-present)
Since the release of The Gospel of Inhumanity, Blood Axis has acquired Moynihan's partner Annabel Lee, previously of Amber Asylum, as a permanent member contributing vocals, violin, viola, accordion and various other instruments. This has resulted in a considerably less electronic sound, a larger focus on Germanic polytheism and a more acoustic folk-based approach as well as covers of traditional recordings, particularly from Ireland, and continued use of historical European references.

This period also saw Blood Axis playing live shows in Portugal as well as various appearances with In Gowan Ring, whose main member, B'eirth, Blood Axis have appeared with as Witch-Hunt playing largely traditional Irish folk music.

Elaborating on the theme of absinthe appearing on The Gospel of Inhumanity, a collaborative album with French artist Les Joyaux de la Princesse entitled Absinthe - La Folie Verte was released in 2001 in deluxe editions relating to the Parisian use of absinthe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This material is largely experimental, neoclassical and post-industrial in sound, more similar to the work of Les Joyaux De La Princesse than that of Blood Axis at the time likely due to the mail-based recording process and dominant contributions from LJDLP.

In 2005, Blood Axis contributed their latest recording, a lyrically modified cover of Brian Pearson's The Ride, to a 2005 compilation entitled Looking For Europe. 2005 also saw Blood Axis play the German Flammenzauber festival, showcasing reworked live versions of several previously released songs, an amount of Irish folk songs and the live debut of a few new songs.

April 2006 saw further live activity from Blood Axis, as well as a new medium for the duo's folk-oriented material entitled Knotwork, which at the Swiss Triumvirat festival.

Moynihan has mentioned the release of a second full length Blood Axis album then tentatively titled Ultimacy since at least 1998, though this album has yet to surface.

On the 2nd of January, 2009, Blood Axis played in Sintra, Portugal, with members of Portuguese band Sangre Cavallum. Moynihan stated on stage that the new album, titled Born Again, was to be released next Easter. Eventually the album got released on the 21st of March 2010.