{"id":1188,"date":"2014-04-07T10:02:11","date_gmt":"2014-04-07T14:02:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/?p=1188"},"modified":"2014-04-11T09:41:16","modified_gmt":"2014-04-11T13:41:16","slug":"axemen-derry-legend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/axemen-derry-legend\/","title":{"rendered":"Axemen <br>Derry Legend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/axemen-derry_legend.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-1189\" alt=\"Axemen, Derry Legend\" src=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/axemen-derry_legend.jpg\" width=\"250\" height=\"250\" srcset=\"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/axemen-derry_legend.jpg 250w, https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/axemen-derry_legend-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/><\/a>If New Zealand was the world&#8217;s WTF scene in the early \u201980s and beyond\u2014producing slightly deranged, slightly pop jangle and discordance from a place as isolated as they come\u2014then it was Christchurch\u2019s Axemen who were the island&#8217;s leftfield misfits. With Lil\u2019 Stevie McCabe and company, nothing was off limits, not even their Flying Nun labelmates at the time. Years before bands like the Boredoms, Butthole Surfers, or in a larger perspective, Ween, the Axemen mocked and ridiculed the norms, both aesthetically and sonically. And like a magic trick, the Axemen managed to tweak The Clean\u2019s template with a slanted glee unheard before\u2014and not heard since, though the band is still active. All of their collage-based, bric-a-brac punk barbs and general weirdness can be gleaned by the essential trilogy of recordings reissued by Siltbreeze earlier this decade, with 1986\u2019s <i>Three Virgins\/Three Versions\/Three Visions<\/i> being their <i>Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/i> meets <i>Trout Mask Replica<\/i> meets <i>Raw Power<\/i> masterpiece. If ever there was a peak, it was it.<\/p>\n<p>By the time <i>Derry Legend<\/i> arrived at the Flying Nun offices in 1989, the Axemen seemed actually impressed with their own idiotic glee. Not only is the album, now back in circulation courtesy of Luxury Products, the most cohesive Axemen record the band ever released, it also contains the most mainstream pop moments they were to conjure. That said, it is grotesque and blatantly jokey enough to reject itself from any classic cannon (that I know of), despite its inherent greatness. (Youtube the group during this era and witness their built-in repulsion.) As sung in the psych-acoustic dirge of \u201cMourning of Youth,\u201d they were lovers of \u201cfinery both new and foreign,\u201d but occupied themselves as strangers in a strange land. It was a revolution of sorts, mucked up in political statements, nihilism towards commercialism, physical turmoil, and chugs of\u00a0 \u201ccoffee wine.\u201d \u00a0It was independent to independence.<\/p>\n<p>If ever the Axemen had a greatest hit, though, it was \u201cRocks in My Heart,\u201d a slab of etiolated cretin pop filled with sardonic wiggles and a sharp sense of melody, history, deconstruction. It is the Axemen in a nutshell, a summation of their ability to wed their idiosyncratic nature with the expected Kiwi status quo. Its formula of multi-hued, quivering vocals and sketchy rhythms indeed turned out to be ahead of the curve. Witnessed in this somewhat dull wave of NZ revival, many of the bands that are continually celebrated (i.e. The Chills, The Verlaines, The Bats) were of their own very particular realm of sound. And though there are no hard feelings against plying the same stroke, the Axemen were all over that small map, while their tentacles stretched back to Memphis and Detroit decades prior. The same kind of polyglot fuck-off is found in \u201cDisc to Disk\u201d and Bob Brannigan\u2019s joyous \u201cHuman Hot Dogs.\u201d Again, both borrow freely from The Clean, but the Axemen are lifers and these songs\u2019 seemingly perpetual motion has done nothing but enhance the subversive tactics of the Axemen sound.<\/p>\n<p>Still, \u201ccohesive\u201d isn\u2019t the right word for this record. Were it not for the purely rockist intent of the album, <i>Derry Legend<\/i> would be yet another grab-bag of demented pleasures. \u201cThe Tragic Tale of a Rock and Roll Legend\u201d could very well be the first rap single produced in the country. \u201cHe\u2019s Leaving Home\u201d could be drunk(er) Sinatra on a lo-fi bender; \u201cThat&#8217;s Finland Dear\u201d encapsulates the powder-keg quality of recording on a miser\u2019s budget, and the finale, the aforementioned \u201cMourning of Youth,\u201d now ranks high on the list of New Zealand&#8217;s best death-march psychedelia moments. All this culminates in what, for a band that thrived on the next moment, is the Axemen going for broke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If New Zealand was the world&#8217;s WTF scene in the early \u201980s and beyond\u2014producing slightly deranged, slightly pop jangle and discordance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[497,498,1444],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-past-perfect","tag-axemen","tag-luxury-products","tag-past-perfect"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Axemen Derry Legend - The Agit Reader<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/axemen-derry-legend\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Axemen Derry Legend - The Agit Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If New Zealand was the world&#039;s WTF scene in the early \u201980s and beyond\u2014producing slightly deranged, slightly pop jangle and discordance\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/axemen-derry-legend\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Agit Reader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/TheAgitReader\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-04-07T14:02:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-04-11T13:41:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/agitreader.com\/wp2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/axemen-derry_legend.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kevin J. 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