Steve Rowe, Lightforce and Mortification Create Australian Heavy Metal History!
Born in January 1965 it didn't take very long for Steve Rowe to begin his love affair with heavy metal music. Thanks to older brother Scott by the age of 8 Steve was introduced to heavy music by bands like AC DC, Deep Purple, Status Quo & Slade. By age 15 Steve's favourite bands were Motorhead, Iron Maiden & Judas Priest.
Brought up in a Christian home, strong Christian values were instilled in Steve and he became disappointed that his favourite music seemed so focused on themes that cut agains his Faith. Between 1980 and 1983 Steve felt that he didn't fit in with the church kids so he spent his spare time partying and listening to metal music with his heavy metal friends.
In late 1983 Steve bought his first bass guitar and started styling his playing on Lemmy from Motorhead, Joey De Maio from Manowar & Steve Harris from Iron Maiden. A youth leader from the Baptist Church that Steve had grown up in, showed up at Steve's house one night to see if he wanted to come back to the church youth group and presented him with a Resurrection Band album. This was Steve's first exposure to Christian Metal Music, the album changed Steve's life and was the stepping-stone back into the church.
Seeing how much Heavy Metal Music with a Christian message had helped him, Steve vowed to form a Christian metal band that would change the world. Initially he formed a band with new friends back at the Baptist Church, but it soon became evident that finding people with the same vision was not easy.
The first band was called Red Cross, which changed to Axis when the pastor told Steve that it was blasphemous to use the word cross in a band name? Interestingly tw of the biggest Christian metal bands to soon arrive on the scene were Barren Cross and Whitecross.
Steve's early bands were very garage level, so Steve and drummer Rohan McDowell formed a new band called King's Image with two females, this band lasted just one concert. Not discouraged, and convinced that girls could cut it in metal Steve started Lightforce in 1985 with Rohan on drums, guitarist Chris Miller & singer Phadrah Hirschfield. This lineup recorded the self titled Lightforce demo in 1986 and again lasted one show.
Disillusioned with the Church he was attending, Steve joined the radical Harvest Christian Centre, which had a huge outreach to fringe groups like metal heads & punks. Dave and Rosanna Palmer from Rosanna's Raiders were pastors in the Church and Steve finally found a home for his Christian metal vision.
The entire band was reformed with real metal fans with the same vision as Steve, Cameron Hall on guitar, Errol Willemburg on drums and Steve Johnson on vocals. Strongly influenced by early 80's Iron Maiden and Judas Priest & Christian bands Barren Cross and Bloodgood, Lightforce set off on Steve true metal journey in early 1987.
After winning the Melbourne Heavy Metal battle of the bands competition against five mainstream acts, Lightforce were immediately accepted into the Australian metal scene and were really good news to a lot of metal fans in Oz. After recording Battlezone the boys toured constantly around Australia.
In 1988 Murray Adams replaced Cameron Hall on guitar and the band recorded Mystical Thieves and signed with US label Pure Metal Records which was already the home of Rosanna's Raiders. Mystical Thieves went on to sell 13,000 units and the boys toured constantly in support of the ground breaking release. Scoring support tours with Stryper, Whitecross and Leviticus, Lightforce had established themselves as Australia's contribution to the Christian metal revolution gaining strength around the globe.
Just when all seemed set for Lightforce to conquer the world Steve Johnson and Murray Adams announced that they had lost the vision and were leaving the band, a massive blow to years of hard work. Unmoved Steve spoke with drummer Errol & manager Alan Thomas about forming a more extreme thrash metal oriented Lightforce with him handling vocal duties as well as playing bass, a power trio similar to Motorhead and German thrash band Sodom. Steve was also inspired in this direction by US Christian thrash/death metal band Vengeance Rising.
Errol and Alan couldn't see the plan working and dropped the ball also. Unperturbed Steve regrouped with Cameron Hall and the amazingly talented Jayson Sherlock on drums. Break The Curse was recorded in mid 1990 and the rest is history as Mortification was born, the Lightforce tag no longer suiting the bands new extreme sound. In early 1991 Vengeance Rising vocalist Roger Martinez came to Australia to produce the self titled Mortification album.
Through many line up changes throughout the 90's the Mortification name became well established around the world. Even leukaemia did not stop Steve's determination to reach the four corners of the world with Christian Heavy Metal Music. In 2001 Mortification conquered the world touring Australia, South Africa, Europe, The USA, Mexico, Chile, Argentina and Brazil.
Mortification is Australia's most successful metal act and Steve's vision continues as strong as ever despite setbacks that would destroy the strongest of spirits. Check out Mortification but in the meantime kick back and enjoy the sounds of where it all began.
As told to Mick Jelinic. (Current Mortification Guitarist)
3 March 2003
