DEMON (Live)

at Trillians, Newcastle, U.K., September 16, 2018

It’s hard to believe that last year’s show at the BroFest NWOBHM Festival was their first ever appearance on stage in Newcastle in a career spanning over 35 years. Striking while the iron was hot, Demon returned for a headlining show at the fable Rockbar Trillians.

With a set built around their classic The Unexpected Guest, singer and founder member Dave Hill entered the stage dressed in full demonic garb including a well creepy mask. Demon were always on the theatrical side and Hill was in his element as he lifted off the mask for the start of Night Of The Demon followed by Into The Nightmare from their highly rated debut album.

Total Possession and The Spell followed from the The Unexpected Guest and the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that this was not a straight run through a classic album in the usual sense but, as Hill explained prior to the show, was are reordering of the songs to suit the ebbs and flows of a live performance and it certainly worked well.

Dave Hill exuded charisma throughout, really getting into the parts with Sign of Madman eliciting some suitably insane facial expressions while simultaneously packing a musical punch. Hill’s commanding voice bringing to mind Joe Cocker in his prime but with more depth and melody.

Following an extended ending to Victim of Fortune, Hill returned besuited with a bowler hat for a dynamic run through The Plague and Nowhere To Run, both from the classic The Plague masterpiece, an album that saw Demon taking huge strides forward both musically and lyrically.

Life On The Wire, the only song from outside their first three albums was stunning, a real dramatic tour de force with Hill’s vocals really making their presence felt. For those who think of Demon only as an occult obsessed NWOBHM band really need to explore their mid to late period work to discover some serious gems such as Remembrance Day, Hold On To The Dream and Life in Berlin from their latest album Cemetery Junction.

The towering chorus of Deliver Us From Evil preceded the timeless Don’t Break The Circle as Demon completed a triumphant first headlining show in Newcastle. With a live album in the pipeline and work on a new studio record in the works, the future is looking bright for one of the UK most underrated and classiest bands.

Review and Photos By Mick Burgess

Author

Mick Burgess

Mick is a reviewer and photographer here at Metal Express Radio, based in the North-East of England. He first fell in love with music after hearing Jeff Wayne's spectacular The War of the Worlds in the cold winter of 1978. Then in the summer of '79 he discovered a copy of Kiss Alive II amongst his sister’s record collection, which literally blew him away! He then quickly found Van Halen I and Rainbow's Down To Earth, and he was well on the way to being rescued from Top 40 radio hell! Over the ensuing years, he's enjoyed the Classic Rock music of Rush, Blue Oyster Cult, and Deep Purple; the AOR of Journey and Foreigner; the Pomp of Styx and Kansas; the Progressive Metal of Dream Theater, Queensrÿche, and Symphony X; the Goth Metal of Nightwish, Within Temptation, and Epica, and a whole host of other great bands that are too numerous to mention. When he's not listening to music, he watches Sunderland lose more football (soccer) matches than they win, and occasionally, if he has to, he goes to work as a property lawyer.
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