THIS SITE IS JUST A TRIBUTE SO PLEASE DON'T MESSAGE ME TO CONTACT THE ACTUAL BAND MEMBERS!!!!
The biography below was written a few years ago by Pawel Malinowski. Further below are my own short comments and updates. But before we'll go into it, I just want to state that this site is devoted just to SIEKIERA's early stage, technically just 1984 as it wasn't before that till the band played its first gig ever at "Remont" in Warsaw and October of the very same year brought SIEKIERA's punk incarnation to its split. And despite loving also band's later output (must hear for all the Killing Joke fans there) I think there's already enough coverage on that (also the MySpace site I will try to put in my Top Friends as soon as possible) plus my love for it isn't even near as big as for the good ol' Siekiera A.D. 1984 which still remains one of the most brutal and powerful hardcore acts ever.
Siekiera formed in 1982 or 1983 in Pulawy, Poland, under the name of "Trafo". The line-up then was Tomasz Adamski - guitar, Tomasz Budzynski - vocals, Jerzy Janaczek - bass, and Borys - drums. They started by playing cover songs of UK Subs and The Exploited. In the autumn of 1983 they changed they name to Siekiera (Polish for "Axe"). There is a legend that the name came from a guy who heard their music and compared it to the axe. The original line-up was Tomasz Adamski(a.k.a. Dzwon) - guitar, leader, the author of all lyrics and music, Tomasz Budzynski (a.k.a. Budzy) - vocals, Dariusz Malinowski (a.k.a. Malina) - bass, and Krzysztof Grela (a.k.a. Koben) - drums. For a while some guy called Piotr Szewczyk played guitar, but they fired him because of his blues influences.
In 1984 they played their first official show in a place called "Remont" in Warsaw. They also performed in Jarocin, at the youth music festival, and they were well-received by the audience. In October of 1984, after a huge show with TZN Xenna and Youth Brigade, Budzynski left the band (he wanted to have some influence on the band's music and lyrics, but Adamski wasn't happy about that). With that line-up they played only 6 shows. After that Budzynski formed a band called Armia (with Robert Brylewski). He's a religious fanatic now, saying that he's ashamed by what he did in Siekiera. Sad.
Tomasz Adamski reformed Siekiera with two new members: Zbigniew Musinski - drums and Pawel Mlynarczyk - keyboards. Dariusz Malinowski took the vocal duties (besides playing bass). In February of 1985 they recorded eight new tracks, some of them were played on the radio. In May and June they recorded some songs for an EP and the Jak Punk to Punk compilation LP. In 1985 they played again at the Jarocin festival, but the orthodox punk public didn't like their new wave image and music.
In 1986 Siekiera released their only LP, Nowa Aleksandria - an excellent album, influenced mainly by Killing Joke, one of the greatest Polish albums of all time. In 1987, a new guitarist, Wieslaw Borysewicz, was recruited, and Tomasz Adamski concentrated on singing. In 1987 they also played a mini-tour with Variete a Polish new wave band. Finally, in 1988 they broke up. They were expected to reform in 1989 with an almost original line up (with Stopa who used to play in Moskwa and Armia as the drummer), but somehow it didn't work out.
Tomasz Adamski is now a poet and became interested in experimental theatre. Tomasz Budzynski is still Armia's vocalist, he's also involved in a Catholic project called 2TM2, 3. He recently started performing solo, and his music and lyrics have nothing in common with punk now. Dariusz Malinowski has got a new band called Tra-band. Zbigniew Musinski is now in Germany. Krzysztof Grela was eventually killed in a pub in Pulawy in January of 1992.
OK, so it's end of 2006 now. Budzy doesn't seem to be so fanatical anymore, or at least he doesn't seem to view singing for SIEKIERA as a SIN anymore (yeah, believe it or not, but back in a day he supposedly asked his confessor to forgive him this very sinful episode of his life hahaha!). During a big tour of old Polish Punk bands in 2003 at which all the bands (including DEZERTER, ARMIA, MOSKWA, KSU etc.) were supposed to play just their old songs from the 80's (despite most of them still existing and having more than enough new stuff), ARMIA started their set with 3 Siekiera's songs (one from the post-Budzynski new-wave incarnation and the other two being Idzie Wojna and Fala). All this (Armia's) set was later released as so called official bootleg CD (limited to 500 copies) called Live At Punk Rock Later (which BTW I strongly recommend to all the fans of old ARMIA - it has just songs from first two LPs and 7" and the 3 aforementioned SIEKIERA songs). After that tour Budzy and Adamski talked about reforming SIEKIERA but again nothing came out of it. However it might be of some interest that in 2004 Budzy recorded an album that is definately SIEKIERA-influenced (however way more polished). He recorded it together with a few of his mates from ARMIA under the name of BUDZY & TRUPIA CZASZKA and the album (CD only) is titled Uwagi Jozefa Baki. It doesn't really sound like old SIEKIERA at all (way more like old ARMIA however not as complex) but is worth a listen nonetheless. And while TRUPIA CZASZKA played gigs with ARMIA last year they played a really healthy dose of SIEKIERA songs which was really good to see (however seeing how punks were perhaps less than 10% of the audience which was typical ARMIA crowd was really pathetic).
Some of you might be also interested in checking 5 SIEKIERA songs recorded by pretty well known Polish grinders, ANTIGAMA. These 5 songs were released as a split CD with JAN AG. (solo project of Jan from AGATHOCLES) on Dywizja Kot Records (Poland) in 2002.
The video above is the only existing (or at least known) footage of old SIEKIERA. It's live at Jarocin Festival on August 4th, 1984 and it was originally broadcasted just a few years ago on Polish TV (after being found in their archives) but due to the shitty sound quality they just added sound off the audio tape, not giving a fuck about any synchro (perhaps the band is playing other song anyways). Oh well, it's still better to watch this than nothing, right? The track is Miedzy Nami Dobrze Jest.
