Review Summary: Not so evil as it seems Demon show their qualities in this illustrious hard rock/NWOBHM album: a true Demon-stration!
Despite of the evil imagery and band name, Demon does not really fit in the heavy metal category if you want to classify the band. The style they embraced was a mishmash of old school hard rock, bluesrock and (during live performances) shock rock, spiced up with some NWOBHM fervor. UFO, early Black Sabbath, Journey and especially Uriah Heep come to mind when looking for a comparison. The over all sound of the band shows more similarity to American hard rock than British, due to the melodious, commercial sounding refrains.
The Unexpected Guest offers a nice example of the band's potency before they went astray.
The album is dominated by guitar and vocals; bass, drums and synths play a minor part. Guitar player Les Hunt is a thoroughbred blues adept and demonstrates his choice for a wailing, good old rocking style throughout the album. Singer Dave Hill is a very passionate vocalist. His raspy, hoarse and sometimes nasal voice matches the bluesy hard rock style of the album and sounds like a frantic version of Peter Criss (
Kiss). At some points his fashion becomes annoying due to the lack of depth and range, but otherwise it is ok. It's his characteristic voice and the thick, smooth guitars that define Demon's sound.
Thematically this pseudo-concept album deals with the dark side of the human mind: madness, possession, destiny and loss of reality. The songs are loosely connected through a common thread associated with these themes. This concern for the occult and obscure the band has in common with one of their lyrical and musical prototypes: early Black Sabbath. It becomes clear in the intro, where anxious panting and a scary off key piano melody evoke the start of a horror movie. Then
Don't Break the Circle joins in with a Sabbathesque pushing riff. This is one of the really good songs of the album, overflowing with bluesy guitar and lots of wah-wah. Hill does a great job here, screaming in an emotional, vigorous way. The impelling, melodic
Have we Been Here Before? is another great song, dealing with reincarnation. This song displays some vital NWOBHM characteristics, mainly owing to the energetic pace. The darksome
Strange Institution is a lingering semi-ballad. The bluesy solo reminds me of early Schenker/Uli Roth. Absolutely the best song on the album has to be
The Grand Illusion, an evil sounding, strong composition in the well-known tradition of Black Sabbath and Judas Priest. The break is particularly notable, starting off with synths and samples of
demonic laughter before the incentive guitar solo breaks in.
The album contains some mediocre or unwitnessed songs too (of course). Mostly they are solid, risk-free traditional hard rock songs without grand intention:
Total Possession,
Beyond the Gates and
Deliver us from Evil are fine tunes, but not impressive. Some are a bit too commercial or repetitive, they tend to fail keeping my attention, like
The Spell and
Victim of Fortune. Altogether this album is a very solid, reliable hard rock album that will please NWOBHM fans as well as 70's heavy rock fans.
The Unexpected Guest constituted the peak in Demon's career. After this album they tried to make a commercial breakthrough, failed and slipped away into relative obscurity. It's a nice coincidence, in this context, that
Sign of a Madman from this album is based upon (or a ripp off from) the Black Sabbath song
Slipping Away. Maybe it's lyrics echoed in their ears after releasing the album, being in want of a reorientation:
Take a look at yourself, you've been running in a circle
Round and round you go, you're a start without an end
Start a new life, yeah, from the city of the gypsies
Running away, slipping away, right behind the plow
Demon continued their career on a more experimental, 'progressive' and unbalanced path. But
The Unexpected Guest will remain the untouchable keystone of the band.
