The Unexpected Guest

Many metalheads have heard the song “Don’t Break the Circle” which was covered by the more well-known metal band Blind Guardian. That song, and to a lesser extent this album, is Demon’s commercial and popular success, and just about the only one. There’s a reason why: “The Unexpected Guest” is the self-defining Demon album featuring Dave Hill and Mal Spooner writing music in the unique and original Demon style featured on the first side of the debut. Even more importantly, it’s all-around more consistent and really shines on.

What is the unique and original Demon style? Highly melodic guitars like Rainbow, sing-songy vocal lines like Uriah Heep, but all with the special touch of Dave Hill’s powerful voice that is highlighted even better now would be the answer. He goes into spastic-sounding wails and screams with vibrato, and simply proves himself to be one the best singers out there. Maybe he’s technically not abnormally impressive, but I’ve never heard another vocalist who sounds similar.

The passion is also turned up a notch from the working class metal on “Night of the Demon”, and now the songs focus on the “unknown”. Everything from séances in “The Spell” to possession in “Total Possession” to the afterlife in “A Strange Institution” to the meaning of existence in “Victim of Fortune” are covered in this piece of art, and that was exactly the intent. It gives off a feeling of musical wanderlust similar to what is elicited in me while listening to Angel Witch’s self-titled debut or perhaps some early Fates Warning. In the Black Sabbath tradition, though, the songs don’t actually advocate practicing the occult, but warn about the dangers of it, giving the album a very human feel.

Musically everything is at least solid, including the drums and bass. The instruments are not highly technical and so they mostly serve to communicate the mood, which I would describe as an impending doom, but yet a very distant one…for most.

“Don’t Break the Circle” is the highlight of this album, being built upon layers and layers of guitar melodies that flow perfectly into one another and build to a crescendo at the very end. “The Grand Illusion” is probably Demon’s most metallic song, being straight up borderline speed metal in composition. It’s very aggressive and one of the reasons it’s not right to refer to Demon as just a hard rock band. It’s also one of the greatest numbers on here.

The flaws on this album are scarce. It can be a bit monotonous for reasons opposite of why most albums are monotonous; this is just a ton of melody and sometimes those melodies are similar. I think it would have been nicer if this album had a ballad or two to mix things up and change the direction that virtually every song headed in.

I can’t end this on a bad note, though. After all, almost every note on this album is gold, so I should give it a plethora of good ones back.