Customer Reviews

The Unexpected Guest

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Demon's 2nd album The Unexpected Guest is a great album. Their first, Night Of The Demon, is a great Halloween album, ripe with dark lyrics but a more radio styled hard rock sound. Rather than play the faster more aggressive up and coming metal of bands like Saxon, Motorhead, Iron Maiden, and Venom...Demon went for a more blue collar British rock sound in the spirit of UFO or Thin Lizzy. Although they flirted with the type of darkness that made bands like Venom so threatening and heavy 1981, they stayed away from the pre-thrash style. And they crafted a record with great singing, melodic riffs, and a solid bass/drum section. Its a minor NWOBHM classic. But their follow up, the less popular Unexpected Guest is apparently a concept album. Its much better than NOTD. Although when played back to back they're great listens. But whats most apparent, is the band here is way more inspired musically. No particular instrument sticks out, well, the guitar is playing ripping here but as a whole its very alive and electric. The band is rocking for its life on these songs.

The production has a lot to do with it. It's vibrant and full of life and singer Dave Hill sounds as enthused as ever. Yeah the Satanic songwriting elements kinda box the album into a certain reaction, depending on how you feel about this type of thing. And this music is dated, as most evidenced by its slight stabs of keyboard here and there. It has a very 80s feel to it, despite being part of the New Wave of British Metal Heavy, which most of its bands remain timeless innovators to the hard rock/metal genre, Demon in a way dont. But this is not a bad thing at all. If you love hard rock or dont require your heavy metal to be speed like (think Slayer or Sepultura) you'll thoroughly enjoy this jewel of an album. From the breaking down the door opener Don't Break The Circle, to the tough rockers like Sign Of A Madman and Victim Of Fortune, youll have your first pumping on all of this. The albums break in momentum, Strange Institution at first feels like a misstep but it soon evolves into a great memorable rocker. The best song here is Total Possession. The chorus part 'total possession! I think he's possessed' while simple enough will be in your head for days.

Where as Night Of The Demon had some great songs and a good feel, it had some down moments. This album never lets up, its a constant stream of mid-fast paced rocking from a band that sounds they're like playing their best music. The album also seems a little more hard rock then Night Of, which contained a few bluesy-rock type songs and a few commercial songs. Guest has a more headbanging feel to it, course not by todays standards or anything but for the fan of early 80s British rock, or especially a fan of horror music (cd for your Halloween party) this is a nice pick up.

It's good to see the Demon albums getting the remaster treatment. They certainly deserve it. Demon was always one of the more underrated New Wave of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) bands - come to think of it, aside from Maiden, Saxon and a few others, they were all underrated.

The Unexpected Guest, released in 1982, is Demon's second album, and a real classic. It alternates between being straight-ahead heavy metal and dramatic, melodic hard rock, sounding like equal parts Saxon and Uriah Heep. The combination works quite well. Songs like "Don't Break the Circle" and "Deliver Us from Evil" are powerful metal anthems, and dramatic pomp-rock numbers like "Victim of Fortune" and "Have We Been Here Before" would have been at home on a Magnum album. The Unexpected Guest is primarily a metal album, but there are enough melodic, accessible songs included that it really should have appealed to a wider audience. I imagine the band's sinister name scared off a fair share of potential listeners.

If you're a metal fan, particularly fan of the classic 1980's British metal sound, and haven't heard Demon, I highly recommend checking them out. The Unexpected Guest is a great album to start with, as it's easily their most "metal" offering and probably their best album overall (yes, even better than Night of the Demon).

Edition Notes: Dead Ringer's 2003 reissue of The Unexpected Guest provides a much needed upgrade, not to mention getting this classic album back in circulation after a long absence. The remastered sound breathes new life into the album, and there are four bonus tracks included for good measure. The bonus tracks are remixes or outtakes of songs on the main album, and don't really add much. The liner notes could have been better too. The lyrics are printed inside, along with a very brief note from Dave Hill. Some additional artwork, photos, or commentary (see Castle's excellent NWOBHM reissues) would have been a nice touch.

This is one of the best Heavy Metal albums ever released - in my opinion. I bought it already in 1983 and I have kept playing it occasionally since that day - for over 20 years now!

Demon took the metal world by storm with this album in the early 80's. Three of my ten metal favorites are on this album only: "Beyond the gates", "Have we been here before" and "Don't break the circle". The guitar solo of "Don't break the circle" is a solo that you can listen to a million times without getting tired of it. "Beyond the gates" is the best heavy metal piece I know of.

Demon plays catchy melodic but really heavy metal not really comparable to any other group.

After this album one of the group members died tragically and Demon somewhat changed the way they wrote lyrics and melodies. Also "Night of the demon" is a really good album but a bit newbie-styled.
Well worth the money though.

Demon released "The unexpected guest" in 1982. Around this time bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Motorhead etc were in focus. Demon might be considered a heavy metal band but they don't sound like Maiden or Priest. It's kinda hard to describe the music 'cos I can't find any band to compare them with... The songs are well written, catchy and melodic but has nothing at all in common with so called pop-metal, hair-metal or whatever you choose to call it. The lyrics show a curiousity in life after death but has nothing to do with devil worship.

Sometimes I think reveiwers give albums 5 stars without even thinking about it - "if it's good, alright I'll give it a 5". But this album is in my opinion well worth 5 stars, or for that matter - [$$$]!

If you like this one, maybe you find the first one "Night of the demon" interesting but have in mind that "Night of the demon" isn't by far as good as "The unexpected guest". And if you decide to buy Demon's other albums - remember that you do it on your own risk of disappointment!!

WELL IVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS TO BE RELEASED ON CD FOR QUITE AWHILE. FIRST BOUGHT THIS CD ON CASSETTE IN 1983 THEN PURCHASED THE LP. GREAT HARD ROCK/METAL NO REAL THRASH OR SPEED METAL HERE JUST GOOD DEMONIC/OCCULT ROCK N ROLL. ALSO, THE DEMONIC MANIFESTATION ON THE COVER IS ONE OF THE COOLEST LP COVERS EVER CONCIEVED OR SHOULD I SAY CONJURED. ANYWAY GET THIS CD. AND PLEASE, DONT BREAK THE CIRCLE.SIGNED 'STOMP'

Demon is exceptionally difficult to characterize. They are rarely included with NWOBHM bands, but don't really qualify as speed metal. This is uncontestably the band's best effort, better than their debut "Night of the Demon" if only for the quality of the material, and much better than their later releases, where they tried to become Pink Floyd.
"The Unexpected Guest" is also effective because of the atmosphere it creates. It is a gloomy ride through the darker side of life, both lyrically and musically, and is rife with the flatted fifths and guitar solos that distinguish metal from all other forms of hard rock.
While avoiding direct comparisons, "The Unexpected Guest" succeeds for the same reasons that old Black Sabbath does. It is comparable in production and performance quality, as well as atmosphere and originality with the debut album by "Angel Witch", "Sirens" by Savatage, or almost anything by Saint Vitus.
It also resembles Witchfynde and Witchfinder General in some respects, but with better production values.
Speed metal fans, NWOBHM fans, roots metal fans, and even Goth fans with an urge to know where their sound came from are well-advised to own this remarkable disc.

Take my word, this is so fu**ing good! It's not a typical heavy metal album, more rock and very unique. Almost impossible to make comparation to other bands/albums. Get it!!

Hey, you should not be reading this if you've still got not THE UNEXPECTED GUEST. RUn and buy it before it goes out of catalogue again. This is the source of inspiration for so many American bands: the new wave of British heavy metal. DEMON was unlucky to choose so bad a name for their band (I mean, people have prejudices against a name like that), and later they lost momentum after releasing weak album THE PLAGUE. But this one here contains the astonishing Don't Break the Circle and other metal gems.

At last re-released, now by Swedish rock label REcord Heaven, one of the greates albuns ever of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal !!!. Demon's two first albuns, NIGHT OF THE DEMON and this one here, are true classic of hard rock / heavy metal, with great dark lyrics, good, musicians, good vocalists. The band was led by singer Dave Hill and guitarrist Malcolm Spooner (R.I.P.), and complemented by lead guitarrist Lester Hunt, bassist Chris Ellis and drummer John Wright. This album has ten fantastic rock songs (the first one is just an instrumental filled with dark noises). All of them still sounds fresh nowadays. A gem, folks !!!

I started off with Demon's third album "The Plague", which I really like because of its diversity and well-written songs. The first problem with Demon is that the drummer sounds uninspired and monotonous and that you can hardly hear the bass player. The second problem is that writing a whole album about summoning up ghosts and the dangers involved can get a bit naive or childish as is the case with this one. Lines that go like: Toootal possessiooon, I think he's possessed ! illustrate the mediocrity of the lyrics... Dave Hill is a great singer though and only his voice saves the band. The guitars are very predictable and every song sounds like the other. As stated before "The Plague" is so much better on all levels and it shows that these guys can be captivating.