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’s
heavy 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's
full-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 SLUDGELORD
with 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's
drummer, 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 Sabbath
and Deep Purple
are 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 Priest
were 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's
debut 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 Pentagram
and 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, Witchcraft
and solo releases, for the rest of my life and for as long as he's releasing
them.
