Category:People:Michael Moynihan

Michael Moynihan

 * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jenkins_Moynihan
 * https://www.discogs.com/artist/224535-Michael-Moynihan

Collaborated on the Boyd Rice & Friends album "Music Martinis & Misanthropy"

Michael Moynihan (b. January 17, 1969, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American journalist, publisher and musician. He is a Fulbright scholar. He is best known for co-writing the book Lords of Chaos, about black metal. Moynihan is founder of the music group Blood Axis, the music label Storm Records and publishing company Dominion Press. Moynihan has interviewed numerous musical figures and has published several books, translations and essays. In the 1990s, Moynihan was frequently identified as a fascist or neo-fascist by some critics and fans. Moynihan accepted these descriptions with reservations in the 1990s, but in the 2000s dismissed them as inapplicable buzzwords used by "anti-this and anti-that activist types" and denounced the far right.

Biography
Moynihan was born in Boston, Massachusetts to a lawyer father. Moynihan identifies his background as entirely Northern European: Irish, English, Welsh, and German. He is involved in a long standing collaborative and romantic relationship with musician Annabel Lee, with whom he has fathered a child. He became active in experimental music from 1984, forming Blood Axis in 1989 and releasing his first album under the name in 1995.

Moynihan attended Buckingham Browne & Nichols, a private day school in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Moynihan collaborated with Boyd Rice from 1989, and in 1990 the two moved into an apartment in Denver. Like Rice and Thomas Thorn, Moynihan was a member of the Church of Satan at this time. Moynihan appeared as a guest with Rice on Bob Larson's "Manson Maniacs", a special for Larson's Christian radio talk show. During the summer of 1991, Moynihan states that he was visited at his apartment by agents of the United States Secret Service about an alleged plot to assassinate then President of the United States George H. W. Bush.

Moynihan agreed to a polygraph test and no charges were filed. Moynihan stated that it was a simple case of intimidation stemming from his correspondence with Charles Manson and visits to Sandra Good. Moynihan stated that he felt that the he had been monitored by the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 1984, that they had taken his luggage on an occasion, and that they had once called his father, admitting to him that they had taken a parcel from his mail. Moynihan cited his then-friendship with Peter Sotos as a potential cause.

Differences between Boyd Rice and Michael Moynihan led to an acrimonious split between the two in the mid-1990s, though Rice would later remember their time together fondly and refer positively to Moynihan. After the split, Moynihan disassociated himself with Rice and was no longer involved with the Abraxas Foundation. Moynihan has been a member of the small Asatru collective Wulfing Kindred since 1994.

In 1995, Moynihan released the first full length album by Blood Axis, The Gospel of Inhumanity and moved from Denver to Portland, Oregon where he became an editor at Feral House, a publishing company owned by Adam Parfrey. After studying language and history at the University of Colorado and Portland State University, Moynihan received his B.A. in German language in 2001.

Music
Influenced by first wave Industrial music artists such as SPK and Throbbing Gristle, Moynihan started his first musical project in 1984, a power electronics project named Coup de Grace, for which he produced cassettes, image booklets, essays and performed live. In 1988, at the age of 18, Moynihan published an edition of Friedrich Nietzsche's The Antichrist featuring artwork by Trevor Brown.

According to Moynihan, a cassette from his project Coupe de Grace was received by a group called Club Moral in Belgium, resulting in a positive review in an art and music magazine called Force Mental. This resulted in an invitation for Moynihan to come to Europe, which he accepted, and resulted in a small European tour for Coup de Grace. Here, he came in contact with Cthulhu Records. Upon returning to Boston in the United Sates, he was invited to join the experimental music group Sleep Chamber.

While a member of Sleep Chamber, Moynihan met Thomas Thorn. According to Moynihan, a falling out occurred between Thorn and John Zewizz, founder of Sleep Chamber, resulting in Moynihan leaving Sleep Chamber and moving to Belgium, where he lived in a warehouse on invitation by Club Moral. During this time, Moynihan described himself as a Skinhead. Living without electricity, a low monthly fee and illegally in Belgium, Moynihan stated it was "worth the risk" but had to install many of his own utilities.

Thorn, who had formed a new group called Slave State, visited Moynihan in Belgium and the two played in a room beneath the warehouse where Moynihan was staying at this time. After the show, Moynihan became displeased with his illegal status and visited the founders of Cthulhu Records in Germany for a few days. After returning to the US in 1989, Moynihan formed the musical group Blood Axis and no longer produced music under the name of Coup de Grace.

Experimental musician Boyd Rice invited Moynihan to go to Japan and collaborate with him on some NON performances there in 1989. Moynihan performed in concert with the various musical groups rotating around Tony Wakeford, Douglas P., and Rose McDowall who were also performing. His performance in Japan with NON was later released as the "Live in Osaka" DVD. That year, an album entitled Music, Martinis, and Misanthropy grew out of these collaborations.

In 1995, Moynihan also released the first full length album by Blood Axis, The Gospel of Inhumanity and has seen several subsequent re-issues on various labels. It was followed by a second Blood Axis album in 1997 entitled Blot: Sacrifice in Sweden for the Swedish post-industrial music label Cold Meat Industry.

In 2001, Moynihan released a musical collaboration with French artist Les Joyaux De La Princesse entitled Absinthe: La Folie Verte themed around absinthe, a beverage Moynihan has expressed fondness for, and collaborated with Portland natives B'eirth of In Gowan Ring, his partner Annabel Lee and Markus Wolff of Waldteufel for a project dubbed Witch-Hunt. Largely playing traditional acoustic Irish folk music, the group played various local shows in Portland and also, in 2001, performed in Portugal, where the album Witch-Hunt: The Rites of Samhain was released. In 2008, Moynihan appeared on the album "Hoodwinked" by The Lindbergh Baby and an Italian language book entitled Day of Blood was published focusing on the musical group.

See also (other bands)

 * Bands:Coup de Grace
 * Boyd Rice and Friends
 * Blood Axis
 * Blood Conspiracy
 * Club Moral
 * Sleep Chamber
 * Hands To
 * NON
 * A.N.A.
 * Changes
 * Bands:Fire and Ice
 * Backworld
 * In Gowan Ring
 * Witchhunt
 * Waldteufel
 * Cotton Ferox
 * Alraune