LILLIAN AXE guitarist Steve Blaze is featured in a new interview with Jeb Wright at Classic Rock Revisited, discussing the band's new album XI: The Days Before Tomorrow. An excerpt from the discussion is available below:

Jeb: I think this is the best album of your career, and in Lillian Axe’s career.

Steve: "You just do the best you can and you hope that it pleases everyone. There are always going to be those people that think I will never top Love & War. There is a part of me that thinks I have to appreciate everybody’s opinion, but there is another part of me that thinks, 'Are you listening?' I understand that album may have meant a lot to people but don’t say that I can’t write anything as good. I think we are in an age where people don’t think before they talk. Everybody is a critic these days. They have the ability to hide and they can just talk without even thinking of what they are saying."

Jeb: 'Death Comes Tomorrow' is the best Lillian Axe song ever written. If that would have come out in the 1980’s it would be Platinum.

Steve: "The epic and grandiose songs are the ones that come most easily for me. I love writing songs like that. That song was visually inspired by thinking of Conan The Barbarian. He is this huge muscleman living out in the wilderness. He is alone. He doesn’t know who he is and he is striving for knowledge. He was always fighting people and he was always trying to find out what his purpose was. I thought that was a cool concept, and a great concept to write a song about.

I was also inspired by the movie Legends Of The Fall. When I put them together then it all came out. This character can’t have relationships. The one time Conan had a relationship she died. It is a very sad and lonely song, but at the same time, it is very grandiose. It has an amazing character that is fighting everything in his path; that is who the hell he is. I can’t try to relate that type of imagery and message in a three chord pop song; it has to be big. When I write a song like that then it really is like a little movie."

Go to this location for the complete interview.

XI: The Days Before Tomorrow was produced by guitarist/songwriter Steve Blaze. Engineering was done by Rob Hovey and mixing by Sylvia Massey (TOOL, JOHNNY CASH, DEFTONES, SYSTEM F OF A DOWN, PRINCE, BLACK CROWES).

XI: The Days Before Tomorrow tracklisting:

'Take the Bullet'

'the Great Divide'

'Caged In'

'Lava On My Tongue'

'Babylon'

'Bow Your Head'

'Soul Disease'

'Gather Up The Snow'

'Death Comes Tomorrow'

'My Apologies'