Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Night Demon
Label: SPV Records
Release date: 21.04.2017
Running time: 37:41
Rating: 3.5/5
Okay, this album has been out for quite a while now, it dropped last spring, but still. Sometimes you just run out of breath trying to cover all the music you’d like to feature on RockLine on time. Anyway, »Darkness Remains« wouldn’t be worth a mention if the revival of the NWOBHM legacy and old-school American speed metal weren’t so hot right now. Hotter than ever. And it wouldn’t deserve special attention if it didn’t bring Night Demon’s trio an absolute upgrade in boldness and promise over their debut »Curse of the Damned«, released in 2015.
The trio of »night demons«, from Ventura, California, found very solid support on the old European continent right from the get-go. Back in 2015 they were already playing Europe’s summer festivals, including the revered German festival Bang Your Head!!! This winter Night Demon pulled off a very successful European tour as openers for the legendary Accept, and this summer they’re heading back to the European festival stages. With the new album »Darkness Remains«, Night Demon will surely cement their international heavy metal status and boost their market value.
In terms of songwriting, the new tracks sound considerably more polished than the debut. There’s a smoother flow from verse to chorus, bigger contrasts between mood swings within the songs, and as a result a much bigger dose of invasive, energetic, musical contagiousness that keeps showering you with an unbridled storm of speed and riff cannonades and, more than successfully, holds your attention. The band has also tried out a few new things you couldn’t find on the debut. That goes especially for the whole dark doom of post-apocalyptic visions embodied by the gloomier but pompous closing mini-epic Darkness Remains. The band also creates an extremely effective drama theater of highly vibrant atmospheres, and gets its predatory edge by layering the chorus melodies with extra vocal harmonies.
So the band draws inspiration from the pioneering legacy of the NWOBHM days (Maiden included), and naturally Night Demon’s musical dossier also stirs up associations with seventies hard rock bands, whose pioneering vision profoundly shaped the NWOBHM movement and, later, metal itself on a global scale. I’m thinking especially of UFO and Thin Lizzy.
Night Demon, then, aren’t bringing a revolution. Given the band’s musical stance, we shouldn’t expect one anyway. What they do bring is a seriously biting, blasphemous take on their own refresh of the old-school heavy metal archive. A pile of seismic jolts of passionate guitar phrasing in constant succession! A real touch of the occult, bitter gloom, a sense of doom,… The night demon tests you at every step. This is an album raised in the spirit of big-hearted authenticity and zero pretension. What you see is what you get. No hide-and-seek with Night Demon.
»Darkness Remains« enchants you with ferocity, heart and unbridled, wrecking-ball energy. The new album is an upgrade on the debut, which went for the same things described above, but this time it hits the listener with even more intensity. With the new album the band has set a new quality standard for itself, and we expect them to top it with the third record. Night Demon give off the feeling that, unlike a dozen of their contemporaries who made promising first steps and then got stuck somewhere in the gray mediocrity of self-recycling, they can climb even higher.
Lineup
Jarvis Leatherby – vocals, bass
Armand John Anthony – guitar
Dusty Squires – drums
Production
Night Demon
Tracklist
1. Welcome to the Night
2. Hallowed Ground
3. Maiden Hell
4. Stranger in the Room
5. Life On the Run
6. Dawn Rider
7. Black Widow
8. On Your Own
9. Flight of the Manticore (Instrumental)
10. Darkness Remains
