Mid-Level Band At Peace With Lack Of World Fame

Fremantle four-piece And My Axe have revealed that they are not fazed by the fact they never achieved anything more than modest recognition among their friends and family over the course of their thirteen-year career.

The band, who are getting ready to embark on their So Long And Thanks For Nothing swansong tour of the city's suburbs, came together as high-school mates in 2001, and went on to self-release three EPs and a full-length in the following decade-and-a-bit. They were played on triple j once, in 2005, but the track was cut off halfway through due to "technical difficulties".

"That could have been such a big moment for us," the band's frontman, Herman Manher, told SPA Confidential. "We got all our friends to tune in, and then right about the 32-second mark it cut out, and then the DJs were talking again and moved on, as if we didn't even exist."

It would be another three years before And My Axe would see acknowledgment from non-local sources, when Tolkien fan-zine The Monthly Gandalf mistook them for a Lord Of The Rings tribute band.

"They kept asking us whether we were in-keeping with canon, suggesting that [drummer] Bill [Kichstein] should be dressed as Aragorn, because apparently Aragorn would be the most likely of all the Fellowship to be a capable drummer.

"That's what they said, anyway; I don't know."

With such a colourful existence together behind them, Manher says that the band have no regrets about their perfectly mediocre career, and now is as good a time as any to call it a day, while they're still riding smack-bang in the middle area of recognition.

"It's fine, really," he told SPA Confidential. "We kept jobs, we raised families — we had a life outside to keep us grounded.

"We always knew it would be hard to break through as a sludge-metal indie-folk jazz fusion band, so we don't begrudge anyone the limits of our success but ourselves."