Kick Axe's long-time bassist Victor Langen was recently interviewed by Mitch Lafon for the Rock Talk with Mitch Lafon podcast.
Canadian heavy metal rockers Kick Axe have released four studio albums over the course of their musical career consisting of Vices (1984), Welcome To The Club (1985), Rock The World (1986) and IV (2004). Langen revealed that Kick Axe are actually working on new material as he indicated (as transcribed by Sleaze Roxx):
"Well, OK. We are in the midst of that. The problem we have is that although we live in the Vancouver area, we rarely see each other with what's going on and now, the whole world has changed so once we're allowed out of isolation... We have recording facilities — two different studios amongst band members — like full on, everything. Larry [Gillstrom] and Raymond [Harvey] have access to all this stuff and are quite active there. We have recorded stuff and it's just a matter of finishing it.
And then, we're probably our own worst critics. We're like, 'Aaah. That's not good enough. Aaah. That's not good enough.' But whatever, we'll get it out there. That was all part of the thing when we came back from the Chris Jericho cruise at the end of January before this dark cloud on the horizon, this Covid thing. We had stuff to go work on in the studio. Everyone cleared their schedules and bam! No can do. So everything's on pause but you're right, you can just run on your back catalog and it seems that's what people really want anyways. But no, there's new stuff coming..."
In terms of whether Kick Axe will be revisiting the sounds of some of their better known albums such as Vices with their new material, Langen indicated: "Well, yeah. We went that direction full on with the fourth album that we did in 2004 / 2005 — whenever it actually hit the streets but it was recorded in 2004. Yeah, we just went with a whole bunch of stuff that over the years, we were all writing and holding on to stuff.
And then collaborating as well when we all got together and we ended up with I believe 14 or 15 songs on that record, on that album. We just went with it and we got some backlash from diehards that they just want to hear "Heavy Metal Shuffle" part two [laughs]. You do face that. There is a backlash. It's kind of strange." With respect to what the new material will sound like, Langen stated: "We're more than ready, willing and able, and I'll throw in the word 'capable' of delivering a really good, good Kick Axe — here we are in the roaring [20]20s ready to go. Now, we just have to wait for the all clear from the science people like everybody else in the whole wide world. We can't do a damn thing right now. We've got irons in the fire. Let's go with that. A lot of it will be reminiscent of the good old days, the '80s, and there will be some other stuff that expands on the '80s."
You can listen to the interview with Victor Langen by Mitch Lafon for the Rock Talk with Mitch Lafon podcast below: