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A Review Of Beyond Hells Gate
Read A Review Of The Axe Of The Apostles In 1989, a band called Final Axe was born. Bill had become aquainted with Keith by playing one of Keith's festivals he put on. Keith didn't have a band at the time, but was selling T-Shirts for Final Axe. He already had a concept and he sold shirts like crazy. A few months later Bill was sitting at home with no band, and wanted to do a new project, but had no particular direction in mind. He couldn't think of anyone to play with and didn't know Keith well, but had his phone number from playing at one of his festivals. So he called up Keith and the person who answered the phone said, "Just a minute". A minute went by and Bill was told Keith would call him back in a few hours. Bill thought, "Well, he's not interested." Two hours later, Keith slides out from under a car he was working on and asks, "What did you say?" "I said Bill Menchen called". "Why didn't you tell me he called?" "I did!" Keith returned Bill's call, and they got together and talked about some ideas. Bill threw a song together real fast on a 4 track and played it for Keith. Keith came back later with some words and sang it. It was called "Prodigal Son". A few days went by and Keith put a new set of words to it. The song became "Baptized in Blood". That was the beginning of a new song writing chemistry. In about a month or so, they had enough songs to make a studio recording. They called Rod Reasner from "DTS", to borrow a bass on the first day of recording. Rod asked if he could come along and watch, and joined the band on the way to the studio, since he was no longer in DTS. Rod called drummer Chris Lattimer a few days later, also ex-DTS, and he joined the group. They did Beyond Hell's Gate very fast and had no money. It wasn't everything they wanted, but they didn't want to wait for a year to save more money. They wanted to get going while they had fresh inspiration. The band started very basic, but the music and live shows began to expand quickly. In 1990, Chris Reth joined the group on drums. Later that same year, the group made it's final apearance at Metal Midnight IV with Bill's cousin Bruce Menchen on bass guitar, and Tim Palmatier on drums. A second album was recorded in 1990' but never finished, or released. Then, in 2005, Retroactive Records had Robert Sweet play the drums on the unfinished album. The album is now available on Retroact Records. "The axe of the apostles". http://finalaxe.com |