Blood Axis

History

Blood Axis was an American band whose core members were Michael Moynihan, Robert Ferbrache, and Annabel Lee. Moynihan, a journalist and author, had previously run a multimedia project called Coup de Grace, which produced live shows, cassettes, and booklets of images and texts, including Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Antichrist. The band’s first releases were two songs, “Lord of Ages,” which used lyrics from Rudyard Kipling’s poem about Mithras, and “Electricity,” both appearing on a German sampler. These tracks did well in Europe, and two more songs followed on the compilation Im Blutfeuer. In 1995, Moynihan put out the first full-length album, The Gospel of Inhumanity, with Ferbrache’s help. The record mixed music by Johann Sebastian Bach and Sergei Prokofiev with modern electronics, included a recording of Ezra Pound reading from The Cantos, and featured lyrics by Nietzsche, Longfellow, and Moynihan himself. The band lineup at that time was Moynihan on vocals and bodhrán, Lee on melodeon and electric violin, and Ferbrache on guitars and keyboards. In 2005, Blood Axis performed at Germany’s Flammenzauber festival, playing reworked versions of older songs, several Irish folk tunes, and some new material live for the first time. Further live shows followed in April 2006, and the duo’s folk-oriented work appeared under the name Knotwork at Switzerland’s Triumvirat festival. Starting in 1998, Moynihan said the band was working on a second album, once called Ultimacy. On January 2, 2009, Blood Axis played in Sintra, Portugal, with members of the Portuguese band Sangre Cavallum, and Moynihan announced onstage that the new album, now titled Born Again, would come out the following Easter. The band’s work references neopagan and völkisch ideas and figures like Ludwig Fahrenkrog and Fidus. Moynihan has an interest in rune mysticism, and from the 2000s onward, he was influenced by the neofascist Nouvelle Droite movement and Alain de Benoist.