Axotalic

Axotalic is an alternative rock/progressive death metal act hailing from Rome, Italy. 
==The Beginning==
Axotalic started as a five piece band in 2005, they were known as Black Fire. The band, in its first incest, had in its formation the power trio that will write the first Black Fire Records (almost everysong from The Black Fire Is Raw to Black Fire VII - We Thrashed, Now We Turn the Page. The power trio included Clash, Jeff and Lita (Clash was the lead guitar player, Lita the rhythm and Jeff to the bass).
As Black Fire the band wrote nearly half of their current discography, from the previously mentioned The Black Fire Is Raw to the less known The Naives - I, which was an attempt (then discarded) of writing a multi-piece rock opera.
==Midnight/Mythic Era==
After a quite long unannounced hiatus, Clash knew that there was going to be something huge for his band. After 11 albums that didn't received that much success, he decided to turn the page. He changed the band name from Black Fire to STARSfromAbove and released three albums in the while.
The first was Set the Fire to Your Eyes which was released solely in the UK. The album went straight at #72 in the charts and sold about 650,000 copies.
Then he had a project in mind. He decided to give a futuristic look to his music, more than indie-ish. So he decided to write a three part saga known as FutureCity. Of the three albums he wanted to do, only two were released, the first being FutureCity/Scenarios and Moods which also saw the band's debut on Midnight/Mythic Records. The album was a total success, it went to the highest position in the UK, USA, European and World Charts.
FutureCity, part 2 was called FutureCity/The Rest of the Mood and it was an album composed of b-sides of the "Scenarios and Moods" singles. This record sold even more than the part one, but didn't reached the #1 in any charts. The two FutureCity record sold, combined, about 9 million copies.
==Axotalic Era==
After the project was over (with part three not released to the public due to a leak of the entire record on the web), he then decided to give another deviation to his band's history. He changed the name to Axotalic and then started searching for a totally new formation as Jeff and Lita left before the band changed its name to STARSfromAbove.
He found what is the current formation of the band, composed of Joshua Sparks and Claudio Smiths to the rhythm guitars, a friend of Clash, Sara Cammarata on the bass guitar, the virtuoso drummer Troy Kingston and the keyboard player Paul Blader.
This formation recorded only one album, though, National Anthem Revisited and it was released after Paul Blader's death, that occurred on September 18. The record was a huge success, estabilishing itself at the top five worldwide, peaking at #1 in Canada, South America, Europe and World. The record was dedicated to Blader, then.
Fueled by ambitions, Clash then decided to write something bigger. He wanted a complete three part saga to be released, he wanted also to write a rock opera time and time ago. So he decided that the time was right and in fifteen weeks he recorded the first chapter of this saga. The record was called Panic Attacks, Part I: The Human Erosions and contained a song divided in 10 movements, that gave the title to the album. The record sold about 4,600,000 copies worldwide, and it went #1 in the UK and Asian Charts.
With some riffs already written, Clash then went onto a 15 weeks silence closed in his house to write part two of the saga. After having made the 15 weeks period that he gave himself, the album was released. Panic Attacks, Part II: The Hexagon of Life was the less succesful record of the saga, but instead was appreciated by the press. The album featured only 4 songs.
Part three came after other fifteen weeks of "auto-prisoning" (Clash's words). Panic Attacks, Part III: Grand Finale was the best selling record of the saga and it didn't have any suite or multi-movimented song in it. This saga sold about 13,500,000 copies worldwide, it was a great result, as Clash said in an inteview some time ago.
Their latest album were an underground success, without being as mainstream as they were with the Panic Attacks saga and the FutureCity project. Shangdi was a tentative of writing an alternative rock record after years of being a progressive metal band. It's Clash's least favourite album to date.
Not on Sale, Yet! was more than a record. It was a personal fight that Clash wanted to do, the fight against record prices. So the record was excessively violent (in both themes and language). The promotion of the album made them play to the Midwinter Mashfest 2007, where they played under the rain and the mud. Bad weather and technical problems were continuously happening and Clash, at the end of the gig, smashed their instruments and said a message that has been censored by most of the Tv's worldwide.
==Self-titled record and hiatus==
Axotalic then came back to the studio to record their new album. Zero, Clash's younger brother, purposed him to do an album that contained other artists singing and playing their instruments with Axotalic. Clash agreed and started recruiting bands that wanted to play with them. He started from their best known friends in the business, Toxic Rick from the underground stoner rock band Noise of the Deaf and his brother Zero, that will start a band somewhen after.
Apart from Zero and Rick, he found six bands and one artist, he then decided to write nine songs with them and write one song that will be the first single of the band. The album was out twenty weeks after Not on Sale Yet, and it was called Axotalic (21 x 9) because "every band needs a self titled record. And 21 is the number of this record, our twentyfirst, nine because of the artist featured on the record", as Clash said.
This album was a moderate success despite the ambitions, just because Clash then decided to retire, at least temporary, from the scenes. He put the band on hiatus leaving Axotalic's future unknown. He produced some albums and EPs from Zero's band, Disease before coming back to write some music.
He wanted to put out a record based on spirituality, but after writing seven songs, he decided to discard the project and start from the bottom writing their twentysecond album. Clash was mysterious about the new record, rarely talking about the record in the details, remaining always vague and sometimes even escaping the argument. Their twentysecond album is called Blizzard and it's the first album that they released on Talent Radar Entertainment, their new record label. "Blizzard - in Clash's words - is a melodic death album with some progressive metal influences in it. My brother helped me a lot about writing some progressive metal song, I mean the longest song I wrote was You and it was a 7 minute industrial song. My brother helped me teaching about harmony, structures, chord progressions, scales and so on...without him I won't put out this record. I think it's the record that we will be remembered of".
Currently the band is resting, after putting out 22 albums and more than 40 singles. There are no words if this return will be permanent or a one-album-only thing.
==Discography==
As Black Fire
* The Black Fire Is Raw
* Master of Destruction
* Leak This!
* Black Fire IV - A Mezmerizing Hypnosis
* Black Fire V - Out of the Hypnosis
* Black Fire VI - Battle Royale
* Black Fire VII - We Thrashed, Now We Turn the Page
* We Want Destruction
* Streets N' Ravens
* The Virus of Life, 1927
* The Naives - I
As STARSfromAbove
* Set the Fire to Your Eyes
* FutureCity/Scenarios and Moods
* FutureCity/The Rest of the Mood
As Axotalic
* National Anthem Revisited
* Panic Attacks, Part I: The Human Erosions
* Panic Attacks, Part II: The Hexagon of Life
* Panic Attacks, Part III: Grand Finale
* Shangdi
* Not on Sale, Yet!
* Axotalic (21 x 9)
* Blizzard
==Band Members==
* Clash - Lead Vocals and Lead Guitar
* Claudio Smiths - Rhythm Guitars
* Joshua Sparks - Rhythm Guitars
* Sara Cammarata - Bass
* Alexis Traggler - Keyboard
* Troy Kingston - Drums
Category:Artists