Released
in 2012 Unbroken is demon’s twelfth
studio album and in my opinion their best since the 1982 release of their seminal LP The Unexpected Guest which
features the legendary NWOBHM track Don’t
Break The Circle. Part of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal scene in the
early 1980’s, Demon later traded on a more progressive style of rock music in
the mid and late 80’s. Hailing from Leek in Staffordshire the band originally
formed in 1979 by lead singer Dave Hill and lead guitarist Mal Spooner they
disbanded in 1992. Returning to the fray in 2001 with their tenth album Spaced Out Monkey, Demon have continued
to play European festivals ever since but tend to limit their UK appearances to a handful
of gigs a year.
I
usually manage to get to see them once a year, and recently caught up with them
at the winking man pub on the outskirts of Leek, actually it’s situated in the
middle of a moor on the Pennines. A bit of a surreal setting but never the
less an enthusiastic crowd of diehard fans were in attendance to witness yet
another evergreen performance by the Demonic sextet.
Unbroken boasts ten brand new songs
that have transcended Demon’s years of ‘progressive’ rock, it sounds like it
could easily have been released a year after The Unexpected Guest album. It all
kicks off with an intro setting the mood to Prey, a song about hunting and being hunted; running with the wolf,
flying with the birds it has a powerful heavy beat and sets this album’s towel
firmly on the rocky beach of the Costa del Metal.
Track
two is very reminiscent of early Demon, Shine
a Light seems to be leading a path to a revelation and maybe it sums up
Unbroken, a new way of thinking, certainly for this batch of songs at any rate.
The
title track of Unbroken is another
fast paced number; it’s about sticking to your guns and no matter how much time
passes you by, never give up on your dreams. Demon front man Dave Hill, the
only current band member to have been there at the start of it all has, it’s
fair to say a few years experience under his belt and has witnessed many ups
and downs over the decades, well it’s all in the lyrics of Unbroken.
Wings of Steel slows the pace down a bit;
it’s a beautiful, poignant song, written from the heart, peace on earth, if
only.
Track
five picks up the pace again, Fill Your
Head With Rock does what it sez on the tin. It’s a rock anthem, all for one
and one for all, “a world of classic rock, what a place to be”. If this song
doesn’t stir your bones then you have no business listening to guitar based
rock music, go and listen to Northern soul or summat equally shite.
The
current line-up of Demon is, the
afore mentioned Dave Hill (vocals) Paul Hume (guitars) Dave Cotterill (guitars) Ray Walmsley (bass) Neil Ogden (drums) and the newest
member of the band Karl Waye(Keys) See photo below...
Onto
track six, Take Me to Your Leader
has an awesome drum beat to it and a recurring theme for Demon, that of alien
invasion Sci-Fi etc. It’s a moody song heavily influenced by the film ‘the day
the earth stood still’ I shouldn’t wonder.
Private Lives is an expose on the
celebrity world of the paparazzi, and with all the phone hacking scandal that’s
been in the news lately it’s easy to see where the subject of this song comes
from. With the limited amount of gigs Demon play these days it does make me
wonder how many of these songs on Unbroken will ever get played live, with such
a huge back catalogue of ‘classic’ songs that they’re obliged to play, songs
like Private Lives will probably have no life beyond this disc which is a shame
as it’s a perfectly good song but perhaps not sexy enough to get a live outing.
The
exact same can be said of the next track, We
Can Make It is a ‘gentler’ number, subtler than most of Unbroken. It’s a
melancholic song about making it if we all try, and we can you know!
What About The Night is the penultimate track
of the album and is most certainly a ‘classic rock’ song, loads of backing
vocal harmonies great emotive guitar work it’s a love song with added ‘Demon’
edginess.
The
gig at the winking man on May 4th was in fact a warm-up for Demon, a
week before they are due to play with the likes of Uriah Heep at the
Metalitalia festival in Milan and with only one more gig booked so far in 2013,
at the railway Bolton on May 31st it’s a busy month for the Demon
boys, let’s hope they get back on the road again soon, maybe a British festival
is on the cards but we will have to wait and see about that.
Well
that’s about it, just time to mention the final song (I can’t remember when forty
six minutes and thirty eight seconds have elapsed so quickly). I Still Believe is the ‘hairs standing
up on the back of your neck’ song on Unbroken; it brings a lump to my throat
every time I hear it. Written by Dave Hill and Neil Ogden this song will become
a ‘classic’ there is no doubt. For someone (Hill) who’s knocked around the
music business for as many years as he has (he owns a bus pass you know) to
still believe that rock will rule the world can give everyone of us hope for
the future and not just in the world of music. Demon should be taking the world
by storm with this new album but maybe they need to change their name to
Metallica to achieve that... GD
You
can buy copies of Unbroken and indeed all the back catalogue of Demon albums
via their website http://the-demon.com/
