Stabbing Westward

The band was formed by Christopher Hall (lead vocals, guitar player, keyboardist, drum machine programmer) and Walter Flakus (keyboardist, programmer, backup singer) in 1985 in the city of Macomb, Illinois. The band has, so far, released four studio albums. The first was Ungod in 1994, followed by Wither Blister Burn & Peel in 1996, then Darkest Days in 1998, and finally Stabbing Westward in 2001. On the ninth of February 2002, the band announced that they were going on hiatus. They remained on hiatus until 2016 when Stabbing Westward officially reunited in celebration of the band’s 30th anniversary and now they continue to perform live shows as a band once again. In 2003 they released two different compilation albums as well.

The band Stabbing Westward was formed while Christopher Hall and Walter Flakus were in college together at Western Illinois University. The pair came up with the name when they were working at WIUS-FM, their college radio station. According to them, the name comes from a speech from the 1950s about the nation’s fears that Communism was “stabbing westward.”