Axe - Nemesis

There’s a part at the end of “Girls Girls Girls,” the last song on side one of Axe’s album Nemesis, where leader Bobby Barth shows some ladies his penis. It’s a spoken word bit, some comic relief as the girls all laugh at the site of his penis.
It may be the most memorable thing about this record.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with Axe (read: 99% of you), they were a hard rock band out of Florida that was a pubic hair better than the hard rock band playing down the street from you right now. They penned just enough decent tunes to get a major label deal and to get a few minor chart entries on rock radio.
They opened for a lot of more famous hard rock/metal bands, and indeed, I got a chance to see them open for Quiet Riot. It was during the tour for Nemesis…wonderfully titled the “Yo Mama” tour…and they were better than the headliner that evening.
But Quiet Riot had the better (and more successful) album.
This should clearly tell you that Axe’s home was on the stage and not in the studio. Nonetheless, because of that very enjoyable live show, I have sought out…some would say endured…two of the band’s most popular albums and this review represents the final foray into this virtually forgotten act.
Sure, the band soldiered on for a few more efforts, strangely several years after they called it quits when Nemesis was originally released. You see, one of the band’s key components, guitarist Michael Osbourne, was killed in a car wreck. After his death, the band (specifically Bobby Barth) found it too difficult to continue and they hung up the Axe moniker.
It’s kind of a shame as Nemesis found the band moving ahead towards a fairly decent sound. It’s heavier than it’s proceeding album Offering, but it ultimately fails because it shares a lot of that album’s major problems. The production incorporates a limp-wristed production strategy that pushes the keyboards way up (and stupid sound-effects) and flatlines the drums entirely. The guitars have some decent bark and tasty riffs, but the moment you find yourself being drawn to them, a dumb keyboard moment comes around and ruins everything. This is strange because I remember the keyboardist being one of my favorite part of their live shows.
There are a few songs with decent melodies and some potential bite, but because of the lukewarm sound, Nemesis comes across like a nameless effort from some anonymous outfit that scored a lesser known Sly Stallone movie.
Yes, Axe and Survivor tend similar fields, but only one of those bands got the break. It’s not because Axe had lesser talent, for sure, but they certainly didn’t have any allies when Atco records allowed them to be paired with whoever sat behind the control room window.
That’s kind of a shame as Survivor got the bigger share of the market; they were essentially studio musicians that suddenly wanted to have a some recognition. Axe, on the other hand, was a bunch of road musicians that wanted the same level of recognition. The difference is that Survivor had the chops to pull off a few radio hits while Axe should have stuck with what they knew: capturing their live sound and forgone the idea that they were radio ready. It could have been just a matter of time before radio finally was ready for them, thanks to some slow growth by gaining fans on the road where they were more at home.
Unfortunately, tragedy prevented Axe from discovering the success that they obviously wanted so much.