Ride the Wind

“…just crashed out of the city on a brand new pair of wheels…”

Smartly and cheaply, Demon attempt selling this single with the same cover adorning their debut, smartly ‘cos it’s damn cool eye-snaring artwork and cheaply ‘cos they’re financing the covers of two releases for one price. However, it’s also kinda cheap to us fans and consumers ‘cos many of us enjoy seeing different cover art if not to simply break up the day. But I’m over it.

Released the same month as Night of the Demon, one of its better songs, “Ride the Wind”, finds itself briskly highway-driving as the chosen a-side (I dunno, seems a bad song can’t be written about wind riding, whether it be these guys, Priest, or Christopher Cross) while the biker-charmed southern rocker “On the Road Again”, despite rolling on steel-belted radials with little to no steel belt for metal fans to chew on, is a smooth and simplistically-catchy enough ride to forgive what isn’t here.

Obviously no brimstone innuendo here, just a poor man’s Bob Seger-meets-poorer-Motorhead style that, despite how deprecating that may come across, finds success here as long as you don’t care that the song climate largely mismatches the jacket.

Oddly absent for this small event is bassist Chris Ellis as guitarist Les Hunt fills in.

“…people say we’re all bad news, hell raisers in the heat of the night…”