FINAL AXE LIVE 1990 - NO TIME TO DIE / CLOSE TO DELIVERANCE
In 1989, a band called Final Axe was born, I remember seeing Keith at one of his "Metal Midnight" festivals. He didn’t have a band but he was selling T-Shirts for Final Axe. He already had a concept and he sold shirts like crazy. A few months later I was sitting at some with no band. I wanted to do a new project, but had no particular direction in mind.
I couldn’t think of anyone to play with and I didn’t know Keith well, but had his phone number from playing at his festivals. I called him up and the person who answered the phone said, "Just a minute". A minute went by and I was told he would call me back in a few hours. I thought. "Well, he’s not interested." Two hours later, he slides out from under a car he was working on asks, "What did you say?" "I said Bill Menchen called". "Why didn’t you tell me he called?" "I did!"
He called me and in a day or two we got together and talked about some ideas. I threw a song together real fast on a 4 track and played it for him. He came back later with some words and sang it. It was called "Prodigal Son". A few went by and he came back with new words. The song became "Baptized in Blood".
In about a month or so, we were in a studio recording. We had picked up and drummer and bassist from a band called "DTS", Chris Lattimer and Rod Reasner. We did Beyond Hell’s Gate very fast and we had no money. It wasn’t everything we wanted, but we didn’t want to wait for a year to save more money. We wanted to get going while we had fresh inspiration. The band started very basic, but the music and live shows began to expand quickly.
We recorded a second album in the early 90s which will be fully re-mastered on Retroactive record in the coming months.
In the mid-1990s, Keith and I would go on to form Titanic, which had a brief stint with Stryper drummer, Robert Sweet.
-Bill Menchen-
