Blood Axis were an American band, made up of journalist and author Michael Moynihan, music producer Robert Ferbrache, and musician and author Annabel Lee.[1]
Moynihan had 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.[2] The first output from the new appellation were two songs, "Lord of Ages" (employing lyrics from Rudyard Kipling's poem on Mithras[3]) 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 compilation, Im Blutfeuer.[4]
The band consisted of Michael Moynihan (vocals, bodhrán), Annabelle Lee (melodeon, electric violin), and Robert Ferbrache (guitars, keyboards).[8]
Contemporary Blood Axis (2000–2016)edit
In 2005, Blood Axis played the German Flammenzauber festival, showcasing reworked live versions of several previously released songs, a number of Irish folk songs, and the live debut of a few new songs.[9] April 2006 saw further live activity from Blood Axis, as well as a new medium for the duo's folk-oriented material entitled Knotwork at the Swiss Triumvirat festival.[10]
Beginning in 1998, Moynihan began saying that Blood Axis was at work on a second full-length album, at one time said to be entitled Ultimacy.[11] On 2 January 2009, Blood Axis played in Sintra, Portugal, with members of Portuguese band Sangre Cavallum. Moynihan stated on stage that the new album, now titled Born Again, was to be released the following Easter.[12]
Witch-Hunt: The Rites of Samhain is a recording of a 1999 live collaboration of Blood Axis and In Gowan Ring, performing as Witch-Hunt. The album was not released on a label. Limited to 100 CDR copies for private distribution, it was sold only at select Blood Axis concerts in Portugal. The album came in a special hand-made fold-out sleeve with a leaf.
Track listing:
Witch Hunt recorded live on Samhain, 31 October 1999
^the album notes read "The Gospel of inhumanity was [...] entirely performed, recorded and engineered [...] by Michael Jenkins Moynihan and Robert Ferbrache".
François, Stéphane (2007). "The Euro-Pagan Scene: Between Paganism and Radical Right". Journal for the Studies of Radicalism. 1 (2). Translated by Godwin, Ariel: 35–54. doi:10.1353/jsr.2008.0006. ISSN 1930-1189. JSTOR 41887576. S2CID 144508250.
Schnurbein, Stefanie von (2014). "Germanic Neo-Paganism – A Nordic Art-Religion?". In Schlehe, Judith; Sandkühler, Evamaria (eds.). Religion, Tradition and the Popular: Transcultural Views from Asia and Europe. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag. ISBN 978-3-8376-2613-1.
External linksedit
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Blood Axis.
Official Blood Axis website
Blood Axis Archive - the new location of the bloodaxis.com fansite
Michael Moynihan Interview; Between Birds of Prey from Heathen Harvest, 2005