Simon RushworthDemons – Great Dismal (Spartan Records)
Genre: Alt Rock
Great Dismal isn’t the easiest listen, although that’s the point. Demons is the project of Zach Gehring, who left the band Mae (who had sold more than 500,000 records) in order to pursue something he couldn’t with his former band.
This is very much a solo project played out through a band, and the sole control exercised over Demons’ songs can be heard all through the album. There are moments of real accessibility in the music, before the vocals become grungy and almost fade into the background.
Great Dismal parades a number of genres in front of the listener, often in one song: Radical Cure sounds like a 90s homage to early Foo Fighters, before warping into grunge and a Smashing Pumpkins-like sound and There Is No Reward is a big, heavy, riff orientated opening tune.
Demons may be a confrontational album, but when that’s the way it was intended it makes it a little more interesting than your conventional debut fare. A vanity project? Who cares. Russell Hughes
RUSHONROCK RATED: 8/10 Nowhere Near Dismal