Band Line Up 2014

Brian Smith on Bass and Ian Thompson on drums. From the ashes of the old band

known as Warrior they changed the vocalist from Jeff Spence to Dave King, and

renamed the band to 'Battleaxe'.

They soon recorded their first single 'Burn this Town' which quickly garnered local interest

and so they decided to follow it up with more tracks of course which became the

first album 'Burn this Town' released by Roadrunner in 1983. With a change of drummer to

Ian McCormack and after gathering a cult following worldwide, the band recorded a second album

'Power from the Universe which further increased awareness of their brand of British metal.

The band then toured the Uk supporting Saxon on their Crusader tour in 1984 after which Steve

Hardy left and Mick Percy and John Stormont joined. With this lineup a couple more tours were

completed through 1985. After this time with the change in musical climate especially with

Hair Metal, AOR, Thrash etc the times became hard for NWOBHM type bands and the band

struggled on only occasionally making an appearance. However this lineup did record a 3 track

demo in 1987.

Ian McCormack left around this time and was replaced by Paul AT Kinson on drums. After a while guitarist John Stormont left and the band disbanded until the mid nineties. At that time they reformed for a few small gigs under the name of 'Kingsland' and recorded a few demo tracks.

Moving to 2010, after recording a video for Chopper Attack, the band reformed with Mick Percy on guitar and Paul AT Kinson on drums and decided after playing a couple of festivals especially Headbangers Open Air in Germany, that they would record a new album. Recording at first on home equipment they soon realised they could not complete it without the extra help of a decent studio, so eventually took it to Fred Pursers Trinity Heights studio for completion of recording and mixdown. Their most powerful sounding album to date, it soon won the attention of SPV and is released in Feburary 2014.

Ricky Squires (ex Heavy Metal Kids etc) joined Battleaxe, replacing Kinson on drums, in May 2014. With this new injection of energy and talent from Ricky the new line up plan to produce a new, even heavier, album over the coming months for release in early 2015.

“Battleaxe are delighted to be appearing at Bloodstock Open Air this year, as we regard

this as possibly the most influential Metal festival in the UK, many of our favourite bands

already appearing here over the years and indeed this year too! “