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Taking their name from one of the darker tracks of the Deep Purple catalogue, Demon Eye consists of four men, two New Yorkers, two Southerners, and one shared love for old school metal, yes Demon Eye are back folks, indeed news of an impending third offering pleases us very much around there parts, having fallowed the upward trajectory of this stellar act since debut “Leave The Light” (review here) hit are decks back in 2014. Be sure to mark the date in your diary because “Prophecies And Lies” will be released on August 11th and that means another superior dose of their classic rock, proto metal and traditional doom.
Demon Eye’sheavy grooves and thunder rhythms channel the doom and crush of Black Sabbath and Pentagram, and the fist banging shred of early ‘Maiden. You could say that Demon Eye represents the flowering of an American take on the spirit of the Scandanavian Retro Rock bands. Combing the warm vibes of 70's jams by Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, Mountain and others with a rough and ready smattering of the early metal roar of Pentagram and Pagan Altar thrown in for good measure.
Their story is an odd one. The band that would come to be known as Demon Eye began life as a seventies tribute / cover band Corvette Summer whose "set generally includes the music of: Thin Lizzy, Humble Pie, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult, Kiss, UFO, Alice Cooper, Free, ZZ Top, and many, many more..." (Source). So the ingredients were all there to begin with. Meanwhile, it turns out frontman Erik Sugg has made quite a name as an incredibly popular children's entertainer in the Raleigh , North Carolina
One of those folks was Jorn, owner of Souseller Records. The label who would go on to issue Demon Eye'sfull-length debut, 'Leave the Light'and 2015’s critically lauded sophomore release “Tempora Inferalia” (review here). So with the release date of “Prophecies and Lies” drawing ever closer, it gives us great please to welcome band the onto the pages of THE SLUDGELORDwith a brand new and exclusive track “The Redeemer” which you an stream below. Folks new to the band, we envy you and if that describes you, you have to get your hands on this album if you would answer "yes" to any of the following questions:
Do you like the demonic smirk of evil and forbidden good times?
Do you like heavy guitars with shredding leads?
Do you like uptempo doom boogie music with catchy choruses and clean vocals?
Not only that, if the excitement of that new track wasn’t enough, we recently caught up with front man Erik Sugg to talk us through some of the bands own personal favourite albums. Which you can check out below the track stream. Double the dose double the riffs. Demon Eye welcome back, you are truly knights of the sound table, we love you and you should too.
Iron Maiden - "Live After Death"
This is Larry's pick. What is there to say? It's classic. Amazing heavy metal that has stood the test of time for several generations and will continue to do so. Top notch song writing and incredible playing. It was pretty amazing being a kid in the '80s and being exposed to Maiden as contemporary band. They were larger than life and made their music epic for fans of hard rock and metal everywhere.
Queensryche - "The Warning"
Bill, Demon Eye'sdrummer, is a huge fan of this era of Queensryche. It's great classic metal from an early period of the band before they began the more experimental portion of their career during the latter half of the '80s, (the more heavily produced, thematic albums.) A lot of folks in the metal community seem to share pretty strong feelings about Queensryche, but this album stands up. If you slept on it, you should go back and give it a listen.
Deep Purple - "In Rock"
We seem incapable of not discussing Deep Purple during interviews, ha. A huge influence for the band, obviously, and this record is certainly one of the best things they ever did. It slams, through and through. Everything from the heavy opening riffs to "Speed King" to Ian's valkyrie-shrieking in "Child in Time," to the almost MC5-ish "Flight of the Rat." I own three different vinyl copies of this, (my listening copy, my back-up copy, and a picture disc version.) It's one of my favorite records of all time. I was stoked to see a recent interview with Ritchie Blackmore where he stated it was one of his favorite things the band ever did.
Judas Priest - "Sad Wings of Destiny”
Paul chose this one. If it were the only Priest record in existence, they'd still be metal gods. It's really interesting this album was released in 1976 because that's around the time when punk started kicking off, but it still granted the band a huge audience and opened the doors for the pending NWOBHM scene. Generally Sabbathand Deep Purpleare the bands credited in making the musical transformation from heavy blues towards a more classical moding style. That sort of thing ultimately became the blueprint for the traditional heavy metal sound. Tony Iommi and Ritchie Blackmore may have been the first guitarists to introduce that style to heavy rock, but Priestwere the ones who really set that sort of thing into stone with this record. It will always hold up.
Witchcraft - "Witchcraft"
I can't not express enough how much this band means to me. When I heard Witchcraft'sdebut record back in the mid '2000s it stopped me dead in my tracks. It was everything I loved about vintage heavy rock and it was traditional doom metal like Pentagramand Candlemass, but it wasn't over-driven nor downtuned. It was very clean and crisp, but still sounded heavy and evil. I kept Witchcraft's sound and their techniques in my mind when I first started writing songs for Demon Eye. I didn't want to sound like them, but I wanted to achieve the same "less-is-more" kind of power they were achieving. I don't know much about Magnus Pelander as an individual, (he's a bit of a mystery to American fans,) but I will always admire his imagination and his stunning songcraft. I will buy everything he ever releases, Witchcraftand solo releases, for the rest of my life and for as long as he's releasing them.
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