Different kind of drums for todays video shoot??? Posted by Martina Axen on Saturday, February 5, 2022
Former DRAIN STH drummer Martina Axén is featured in the music video for Zinny Zan's cover version of the DEPECHE MODE classic "It's No Good". Axén can be seen playing percussion in the clip, which was filmed on February 5 in a suburb of Stockholm, Sweden.
DRAIN STH split up more than two decades ago, not long after the release of the band's final album, 1999's "Freaks Of Nature". That effort was notable for the inclusion of the track "Black", co-written by and featuring lead guitar from BLACK SABBATH's Tony Iommi, who has since married DRAIN STH's ex-singer Maria Sjöholm.
In a 2008 interview with Autona magazine, Axén stated about DRAIN STH's decision to call it quits after only two albums: "Well, one of the reasons was that our singer decided to quit the band and the music business overall. We could have continued with somebody else singing, but were stuck in such bad deals with the record label that, basically, it seemed useless to keep on going. To get out of the deals, even after she quit, we had to sign a contract that we could not play together more than two of us at a time in any constellation (within five years) without the label considering it to be 'DRAIN,' meaning we would still be signed with them. It was unbelievable, because by then, Flavia [Canel, guitar] had already given up and quit too, and the label still wouldn't let me and the bass player [Anna Kjellberg] go, saying that they considered us being the main songwriters. So me and the bass player signed the papers, got two tickets to Los Angeles the day after, and never went back."
In the same interview, Martina talked about DRAIN STH's influence on the number of female musicians playing hard rock and heavy metal music. She said: "I get a lot of e-mails from people telling me about how it changed them. Things completely changed since we released our first album. You see chicks half naked on music magazine covers now. When we got signed, the first thing the label told us was to cut off our hair. Said it wasn't 'credible' to look the way we did. Sweatpants and sneakers, wow, very sexy! [Laughs] We all refused and ended up releasing the first album without any pictures at all and no press pics either. There was nowhere where you could see a picture of us. The first Ozzfest tour poster we did was taken at night in the dark with knee-long big black coats and the faces painted over in Photoshop so that you couldn't tell that we were not guys. We had people coming to the shows thinking we were the opening act for DRAIN, not knowing that we were girls in the band. [Laughs] Later when we changed the label it got re-released with pictures."
She added: "I don't think DRAIN ever sounded like a girl band. We never intended to. Our heroes were BLACK SABBATH, PANTERA and all the old-school metal."
Nearly a decade and a half ago, Martina, who also spent time as the lead singer for SUPERFIX (the aborted project also featuring Kjellberg) and SNAKE RIVER CONSPIRACY, released two solo tracks that were made available for download on her then-MySpace profile: "Always" (which featured Kjellberg), and "Ghost Of Me" (which featured former COAL CHAMBER bassist Nadja Peulen).
Zinny Zan's cover of "It's No Good" will be included on the former EASY ACTION singer's upcoming album, "Lullabies For The Masses", due on May 20.
