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Dawn Of Azazel.
Dawn Of Azazel came out here with comparatively little fanfare at the end of 2001, but the New Zealand death metal outfit are set to return for a considerably more ambitious Australian tour. Vocalist and bass player Rigel Walshe is more than happy to give me a run-down of their history. "We started in '97," he recalls. "It was pretty much just me at that stage; we got the line-up that we have now in 1999. We did our first demo 'Of Bloodshed And Eternal Victory' in 1999; it was a pretty small one, and only released here in New Zealand. We did our next one, 'Vita est Militia Super Terram', in 2000, and after that, we put out a 7" called 'The Bloodforged Abdication' on an Italian label in 2002; that one was just two songs. It sold out on just pre-orders, so that was pretty cool.
"We released our first full-length album, 'The Law Of The Strong', this year; that's what we're coming out to promote. We've toured all round New Zealand so many times since 1999 - we've played probably about 45-50 shows here - and did a tour of Europe in July. We did eight shows over there, playing in Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, France and Austria, and we've got a new album coming out in February next year."
The band's European tour was organised by their Polish label and Walshe sums it up as "pretty killer". He displays similar enthusiasm for the metal scene in his own country, which has apparently really picked up during the last couple of years.
"Even up to 2002, it was pretty shit," he laments. "At the first couple of gigs we played, there would be something like thirty people in the audience, but over the last few years, it's gotten so much better; at the last show we played here, we played in front of 200-something people which was awesome! The scene here is great now; there're so many top, killer bands. As for ourselves, we've managed to get on the national news, get a video on TV, and be in the newspapers and all the mainstream music magazines over here."
Not surprisingly, Walshe's last comment about the band appearing on the news intrigues me. "Basically, we put out a video [for Immortal Dominance]", he explains.
"It came out really well, and we were really happy with it. There are two main music channels here in New Zealand, and we pitched it to the more corporate one. Unfortunately, they gave us the run-around about it for a while; eventually they told a friend of mine, who was acting as an agent for us, that they'd shown it to the program director, and that he said he'd never play it; according to him, it was unsuitable for airplay.
"Basically, it was just us playing in a room, so fuck knows what the go was there! We put the word out: 'Fuck, we've been banned!' and it got on magazines, as well as all the chatrooms and shit here. People were calling up radio stations, calling up the music station and saying, 'why have these guys been banned, I want to see them, what the fuck's going on there?' It got all over the music press as well, and Three News heard about it; they hooked up an interview with us which was fantastic. TV3 is pretty much the biggest news channel here; it has hundreds of thousands of viewers."
Moving onto the subject of the band's upcoming visit, I ask Walshe what memories he has of their last show in Adelaide. "It was killer, man!" he enthuses. "No-one knew who the fuck we were, but it was killer! It was a really good turn-out, and the crowd was pretty into us. We've been meaning to come back for the last three years, but have been putting it off for various reasons, so it's really cool for us to finally be getting our arses into gear and coming back over."
Walshe promises that the group's next show here will be just as good as the last, and sends out the following message to the metalheads of Adelaide, "Anyone who saw us last time and enjoyed it, come check us out again, because we've definitely progressed a long way since then. Anyone that didn't come then, check out - if you don't mind me saying - New Zealand's premier death metal band!"
James Brazel
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Dawn Of Azazel play an all-ages show with Slaughter Thou, Raven Black Night, Lord Of The Command and Juggermath at Jive on Sun 14 Nov. 'The Law Of The Strong' is out now on Agonia Records.
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