LICK THE BLADE
Tom Mowcomber – guitar
Brian French – guitar
Ted Anderson – vocals
Mike Kurtz – bass
Greg Behnke – drums
“Maiden, Priest and you could throw Running Wild and Mercyful Fate in there too,” says guitarist Tom Mowcomber, when asked whose fans might also get into Lick The Blade. “We don’t want anything modern in our sound. We love classic metal! Even the bands that are doing classic metal seem to throw in this modern stuff, or things from other genres. We just want to do 100% pure classic metal, for people that want to hear that.”
Who says all the new metal talent is overseas? Cleveland, Ohio’s Lick The Blade join the prestigious Auburn roster, a label whose initial batch of signees (including Shok Paris, Destructor & Breaker) still garners fans’ respect, two decades after their release. Lofty standards to meet, to be sure, but Lick The Blade have what counts most, the music. Honed in the gritty clubs in and around Cleveland, this quintet’s eponymous debut is wise beyond its years. Mowcomber is aware of the situation, both at home and overseas. “We're quite excited to finally get to record all of these songs. It's really been an honor to have this opportunity. Heavy Metal is a precious commodity these days, so it’s reassuring to know that people out there still believe in it!” Speaking of overseas, the band makes their international debut on the stage of the Headbangers Open Air festival, in Germany, July 2009 (although drummer Greg Behnke’s prior commitments will see Breaker’s Mark Klein sitting in). “We’re really lucky. We’re grateful for the opportunity, because a lot of bands never get that chance.”
“Graveyard Of Empires”, the band’s debut album, was recorded at Breaker drummer Mark Klein’s Noise Floor Studios in Cleveland with Klein engineering. The album includes ragers like ‘Thanatos’ and ‘Red Warning’. “A few of these were on our 2004 demo,” says Mowcomber, “so basically seven of them are new.” The title track tells the stories of power hungry rulers and civilizations vying for control that have left a trail of destruction over the course of earth’s history. “They do not think they are expendable and only want the power and glory”, states Mowcomber, “until someone else comes along and wipes them out and then it starts all over again!” Mike Kurtz (bass) wrote a trilogy, called the Seven Seas Of Hate, which is based on a Charles Dickens poem. “It’s comprised of ‘Red Warning’, ‘Sea Of Apathy’ and ‘Voyage Of The Damned’,” elaborates the guitarist. “The poem is called Chips, which was a children’s story, but (Kurtz) turned it into a metal concept.” The written word is a major impetus for song ideas. Take ‘Royal Blood’ for instance. “It’s based on a book, Holy Blood, Holy Grail. The DaVinci Code was a fictional work based on this reportedly non-fiction book. It’s about the theory that Christ was not a divine being, but the next in line for the throne and that bloodline. Our other guitarist (Brian French) is into (philosopher) Fredrich Nietzsche. He loves the guy. One track on the album, ‘Resistance, Rebellion, and Death’ was pretty much solely written by (the guitarist) and revolves around some of Nietzsche’s works. We’re working on stuff for the second record, just bits and pieces of seven or eight songs, and there will be another Nietzsche song in there, hopefully”
The media, both written and visual, is a thread tightly woven into the makeup of Lick The Blade, even providing the band’s name itself. “Our old guitarist, and I were watching the original Halloween one night with some friends. We were partying pretty hard that night, and after watching the movie, we had the bright idea of using a butcher knife to stab the hell out of a watermelon that we had just cut open and filled with booze. At some point during all of that chaos, a friend of mine took one of his stabs at the watermelon and licked the guts off, after retracting the blade, and suggested that Lick the Blade would be a great band name. And thus, the name was born. The name referred to licking the blood off of a knife... nothing more, nothing less. I think the name really does a good job of representing the aggressive, relentless, powerful nature of heavy metal. Although, the story of its development is quite ridiculous!”
Mark Gromen
Contact:
www.licktheblade.com
www.myspace.com/licktheblade
www.auburnrecords.com
www.myspace.com/auburnrecords
Albums:
Lick The Blade – “Graveyard Of Empires” (Auburn Records)
Release date: September 15, 2009
Read more...