AXEMASTER – The Metal Veterans Of The 1980s
Interview with Joe Sims
1. Would you ever believe that after all these years, you will be still here playing Metal music?
Not really, I always knew I wanted to be a musician for as long as I possibly could, as long as my health was good and my fingers still worked. Only thing was that back in the 80’s, for the most part, being in a metal/rock band was considered to be a young person’s thing. So I wasn’t sure if a musician past their early 40’s would get many, if any opportunities. Times sure have changed!!!!! Now you have Ozzy and some or all the guys in bands like Maiden, Priest, and Kiss who have blown way past 50. Hell, even members of bands that started in the 80’s like Metallica, Megadeth, and Anthrax are at least my age, surely not young pups anymore! Being a metal guitar player has always been who I am, my identity. So I’m really glad that attitudes have changed and the opportunities for a guy my age and a band like Axemaster are out there as much as they ever have!!!!
2. What does it take in order to maintain active the status of the band Axemaster all these years?
Basically takes a lotta work and a serious love for what you’re doing. Still being able to write music that isn’t just ripping off past tunes you wrote sure doesn’t hurt either! I have an advantage because I have a lot of experience in working in the music business, so that’s really helped especially with getting our record deal. Overall, you have to be willing to put in the time and work, and to deal with bullshit (especially in my case since I do so much of the business side of the band), but that’s the case with any band. New band, old band, it doesn’t matter, you get involved in music to anywhere close to the degree that I am/we are, you have to deal with a lot of bullshit. You need to be patient, stay cool, and always be professional no matter what you have to deal with. Then when you’re away from the situation, you can yell and scream and bitch up a storm to your heart’s content hahaha!
3. When the band was officially founded and what do you remember from those years?
Oh god, there were so many hilarious great times that I still laugh my ass off about when I talk about a lot of them. Too many to get into here, I would end up writing a book just answering the question! But I’d say the absolutely most kick ass thing concerning music itself that comes to mind right away is when I got and read THE letter from Azra Records saying that they were prepared to offer us our first record contract. Back in 1985, getting signed to a real record label to do a full length vinyl album was a really huge deal, a lot bigger thing than getting signed is today when, with the computer and internet, a person with very little money and no experience can run a record label on their own out of their basement. And Azra had some really kick ass bands like Overkill, Jag Panzer, Dark Angel, and Leige Lord. So seeing that letter for the first time is a moment I will NEVER forget, it changed my life forever. I actually still have the letter, it’s going to the grave with me!!!!!!
4. What do you remember of the video shooting of the video “Slave To The Blade”
It was originally done for a local TV show. That same show had actually airred a video we shot ourselves about a year before that; a song from our first demo before we signed with Azra. That one was just one camera on a tripod shooting us lip-synching a tune from the tape on a make-shift stage in front of my house. But for the second one, they wanted something that looked better; so they had us come to their studio, set up our gear, and lip-sync a song from the album there. It was done in one take, no editing. Two things about it I really remember: one is that the sound system they had wasn’t loud enough for Brian to actually play his drums to it, he tried and it totally drowned out the song, none of us could hear anything but drums! So if you watch Brian on the video kina close, you can tell he’s only fake playing. Also, I had no idea they were using a “blue screen” until after I saw that every time they used the effects on the blue screen, my one leg disappeared because the pants I was wearing were half blue HAHAHAHA!!!!!
5. Why did you have to change the name of the band to Inner Terror and then back to Axemaster?
Mainly because IT wasn’t really a “band” as much as it was a studio project. After we tried an Axemaster reunion with the original lineup which didn’t work out, we got a new bass player and singer. The original plan was to continue as Axemaster; but as time went on, due to quite a few different factors, it looked like we weren’t ever gonna do any shows together, just that one album. Hell, me and the guys in that project were only all in the same room together once, we NEVER rehearsed or played together. So when the singer kept bitching that he wanted us to do the album as a new and separate band, I didn’t really have a problem with naming the project something different. If I was gonna use the Axemaster name, it was gonna be as a working band that played shows, not in a half-assed way as just a recording project!!!!!
6. Is traditional heavy metal a music genre with commercial potentiality in terms of live concerts and albums sales/streams?
Overall, I would say that the potential is there, but it’s really, really tough. True metal fans are by far the best, the most loyal and dedicated fans of anything in the world, and support bands like fans of nothing else. But especially in the US, there are not enough true fans to alone make the music as commercially viable as it needs to be. And when you need to rely on marginal fans, bands like us run into the issues that people just don’t come out to shows or buy music or band merchandise like you used to see. To me, we, as metal fans, need to spread the word as much as we can about all the great bands out there and let that hopefully generate more overall interest in the music from just general music fans. It’s a slow process, but every little bit helps!!!!
7. How do you manage to maintain the band in the years of music streaming ?
The digital age is definitely a whole different scene than it was when we first started out, hell, it’s a whole different world! There are the obvious serious disadvantages, namely illegal downloading and the oversaturation of the market since just about any band, no matter how bad they might suck, can easily put albums out and push them on social media. But I think the key to it is to take full advantage of the opportunities the digital age provides to try to at least somewhat offset the disadvantages. Like I work my ass off on social media, research to find email addresses to add to a huge mailing list and send out mass emails when there are important band happenings, upload promo packs that include MP3s from our current album to all the metal radio and zines I can find, make sure we have a page that includes a song or 2 and/or videos on as many outlets/sites as possible, and make sure our website stays updated and looks good. Either these things were not available or were somewhat costly back in the 80’s.
8. I remember that you had some re-releases recently with sound improvement, would you like to talk us about it?
For sure! It’s a 2 vinyl record release called “Blessing in the Skies (and other cuts from the chamber)”. It includes 19 tunes, the whole “Blessing in the Skies” album, the whole “5 Demons” EP, a couple songs from the “Slave to the Blade” demo, and a couple others that were originally unreleased. Like you mentioned, all the tunes sound better than they ever have. I worked with an engineer in Austria to improve everything an he did a hell of a job, I didn’t even know it was possible for some of those recordings to sound that good!!! The album also includes all the lyrics and original credits, cool front and back covers, and a bunch of rarely or never seen photos from the eras the different albums were originally released. I’m really happy with how everything turned out!!!!!
9. What is the band up to now? Please share with us the recent news of the band.
Right now the band is going through several changes, and we have to wait for all that to be taken care of before playing again. But, even though I’m mainly concentrating on getting these changes done so we can fully move forward, I’m still working on promo and doing some writing. I have quite a bit of new stuff that I’m really excited about, so I’m taking this opportunity to work on it because, once all the changes are in place, I’m gonna be focused almost entirely on playing shows.
10. Do you have a touring schedule at the moment?
Our management is currently working on some kind of a U.S. tour for us for 2019. It’s still in the planning stages, nothing has been booked yet, so there are still a whole lot of details that need to be worked out. But I’m still excited about the prospect! Fans can stay updated about this and all other band happenings by checking out our website at www.axemasterofficial.com and our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/axemasterofficial/
Band information: www.facebook.com/axemasterofficial/
