PRESS GUIDE

[published]: 2014, August 15
[in]: The Big Book of Hair Metal: The Illustrated Oral History of Heavy Metal's
Debauched Decade, Voyaguer Press, p. 57, 83, 101
[article]:
[by]: Martin Popoff

May 15, 1984: Kick Axe release Vices on Pasha/CBS to positive reviews. Originally formed in Saskatchewan in 1976, they moved to Vancouver in '78. Vices shares that Spencer Proffer/Pasha sound with Quiet Riot, W.A.S.P., and Icon.

Larry Gillstrom (Guitarist, Kick Axe): Vices is a very powerful album. It was the combination of many, many years of the band wanting to get a record deal and once we got that, we got to go down to Hollywood and record under some great circumstances. But it seemed to me that when we were doing our first album, a lot of the staff there were getting paid in currencies other than money. The song 'Vices' was written right in Hollywood when we were recording and it was basically about what we saw going on around us [laughs]. That was inspired by just that very close surroundings of rehearsing in SIR and recording in Pasha. And we wrote that with Spencer, at his house, and we were just making it up.

1985: Kick Axe issue Welcome to the Club, which finds the band shedding pretty much any vestige of a glam sound or feel.

1986: Kick Axe issue Rock the World, which sees the band returning to a heavier, if still not very glam, metal sound. It will be the last album for the band until a reunion album in 2004 called IV. Rock the World is a major-label record in Canada, but is issued in the US on the Mercenary indie.