By Martin Popoff

SNAKE EYES SEVEN is a new Regina, Saskatchewan band featuring - in a meeting of metal generations - KICK AXE bassist Victor Langen as well as ex-INTO ETERNITY vocalist Daniel Nargang. The band is rounded out by guitarist Cole Stevens and drummer Johnny Bland, and the idea was to take all that heaviness Victor had been hearing during his years away living in Germany and apply it to old school metal values.

Mission accomplished, as the album is a thick, doomy, maybe even a bit grungy collection of bruisers, recorded harshly… think Dehumanizer crossed with IOMMI and GZR with a bit of Alice in Chains added for modern edge (even if the band bio curiously calls it “vintage Sabbath infused with Rammstein.”)

“Exactly, it’s an intentional return to old school. Old DEEP PURPLE, BLACK SABBATH, the original formations of those groups, you know? Lyrically, it seems to be dark, for the most part (laughs). Specifically, just older, wiser, I guess. I took the reins of the production as well, and was going for that wall of sound of early Black Sabbath, some of that feel. It had a human feel to it other than today, where everything is all polished and perfect.”

Of hooking up with Nargang, Victor says, “I’ve known those Into Eternity guys for a long time. Danny was the guy; that’s what I was going after. Glad to have him on board. Same with the label. That’s Bill Chavis. It turns out that he contacted me actually; he got wind of it through the grapevine, that we were starting something new, and we developed a relationship. He’s based in Baltimore, Maryland, and that’s who we went with. We had been shopping with everybody, independent and majors, but he seemed to be the most sincere and interested, right from the get-go.”

Langen says the band is working on US and European festival dates, but that Canadian tour dates are also in the cards. Touring is a priority, which unfortunately wasn’t the case with Kick Axe, who got together for an album called IV and then fizzled.

Asked about the writing of the material, Victor points out, “Again, it’s all going back to the old days. If you read the songwriting credits on old Black Sabbath or Deep Purple or KISS, it’s everybody involved. Everything is thrown into the pot. All the songs are written as a group. It was a conscious effort to try and create something new out of some diverse backgrounds. And we actually could have recorded two albums at once, given how much we had.”

So are you saying that Kick Axe is on hold again?

“It still exists, but I couldn’t tell you when anything is going to happen next. It’s unlikely to be a touring entity, although there is still something brewing that we may record, to get together again. But it would have to be more hard-hitting than our last outing, for my personal tastes. So I want to keep going with this Snake Eyes Seven. You know, we gave it our best shot, and the kind of felt weird to me. I was living in Germany for seven years, and the guys said, ‘Come back and do this.’ OK, great, but there was no George, so we got my brother, who was a founding member of Kick Axe, many years ago. So he had the right to do it, but the material, to my way of thinking… I was living in Germany (laughs), where things are way heavier. I know we weren’t hitting the mark here. So that’s why I’m back with Snake Eyes Seven. I’m hoping that people find Snake Eyes Seven a little more hard-hitting.”

For more on the Snake Eyes Seven situation, see www.chavisrecords.net or www.snakeeyesseven.com