Review by Daniel for Axewitch - The Lord of Flies (1983)
By 1983, the Swedish heavy metal scene was starting to become a bit player in the global market. It had taken a lot longer than most of us probably realise to get going but we now had bands like Heavy Load, 220 Volt, Torch & Europe all vying for the public’s attention through a traditional sound that drew heavily from the English for influence. Linköping five-piece Axewitch were one of the lesser known bands popping out of the woodwork at the time but their debut album “The Lord Of Flies” is certainly not far off the pace set by those other bands I mentioned.
To say that Axewitch pushed a meat-&-potatoes style of heavy metal is an understatement as there is absolutely nothing here that you won’t have heard before. Whether it’s the obvious Van Halen plagiarism on instrumental guitar solo track “Let The Strings Cry Out” or the just as obvious homage paid to the keyboard intro from Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mr. Crowley” on two minute interlude “The Arrival Of The Flies (Part 1)”, you’ll always find yourself casting your mind back to a familiar track or band of some sort. But that’s not necessarily such a bad thing in my opinion. I’ve always been able to look past a generic sound when it came to my metal as long as the production, performances & song-writing have stood up to my scrutiny. So the question is, do they in this instance?
Well the production is reasonably good for the time & certainly doesn’t impede your listening experience & the instrumental performances are also on the money without ever becoming highlights. In fact, I’d suggest that instrumentally Axewitch were a pretty decent heavy metal outfit & the signs were very good that I’d be enjoying “The Lord Of Flies” early on with the first four tracks all offering a fair bit of appeal to me. But there are a couple of issues that become apparent the further you get into the album & they’re mainly related to vocalist Wallen.
Wallen is by no means a terrible singer but for a generic heavy metal band to be successful they need to have a genuinely charismatic front man & he doesn’t really cut the mustard in that respect. His mid-range delivery simply isn’t powerful enough to engage the listener on the level required to break out of the underground as he struggles to hit the big notes at times. He’d make a decent cover band front man for the local pub scene but he certainly can’t compete with the Dio’s & Halford’s by any stretch of the imagination. Also, some of the later tracks show the song-writing to be half-baked & I’d suggest that Axewitch probably weren’t quite ready to venture into the studio just yet. Just listen to the vocal phrasing & melody on songs like the terribly commercial “Down Town” or the subpar closer “Seven Angels”. It seems like Wallen is almost improvising his vocals at times & it doesn’t really work as far as I’m concerned. This leads to me finding these tracks fairly tough going despite some decent instrumentation.
“The Lord Of Flies” is by no means a disaster though. In fact, highlight tracks like “Just Another Lunatic” & the title track really hit the spot for me but it’s hard to see the replay value in an album that simply emulates the big boys of the heavy metal world whilst rarely equals them in terms of quality. The influence of English bands like Judas Priest, Saxon & Iron Maiden are the most recognisable & fans of those bands will certainly find some enjoyment in Axewitch’s workman-like brand of hard rockin’ heavy metal but I doubt “The Lord Of Flies” will be hitting too many best of lists.