DEMON Interview Page 3
By Bob Nalbandian

SW: I would think, throughout the '90s, it must have been difficult for any British hard rock band to keep it together. It seemed like rock and metal was huge in England in the '80s and then techno music and pop totally took over in the '90s, and then bands like Oasis, Blur, Jamiroquai, etc... but there was literally no real rock music coming out of the UK.
DAVE: In Britain, even in the mid-80s, we had to concentrate on Europe totally and other places outside Britain. The sad thing was the venues that did exist in the '70s in Britain were fast disappearing. Britain came along with Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin - and we were following along with that tradition. But there were a lot of bands during that period that should have carried the British tradition on but they couldn't get the press because they couldn't find any venues to play. So Kerrang! and other publications were turning more toward the American market. It's very sad, if you notice, from about 1985 onward, the British tradition of the NWOBHM sort of followed the bands of the early '70s - like Deep Purple - there was that huge inspiration and there were a lot of good bands [in England in the mid-late '80s] that weren't getting deals because the companies were looking for American sounding bands. Then they got into the dance and the techno thing, and it never really recovered as a strong music entity with traditions that were bred in British rock. So bands like DEMON were forced abroad to make albums in Germany and places like that. I think we still gained a lot of respect since we tried to continue in what we always believed in. It was sad, the fact that the whole world lost a generation of British rock bands because of the mentality [of the press and labels] and the lack of venues.

SW: The music press in Britain has always been much more important and influential than in America, where it's radio and MTV that makes or breaks an artist. So it's not surprising that the views of the press had a major affect on the decline on the UK metal scene.
DAVE: I'll give you one particular example, we just did a festival in Sweden, "The Swedish Rock Festival", and it was a stunning bill...Jethro Tull, Yes, Whitesnake, Queensryche, Motorhead, Budgie - just a great classic rock bill. And nobody has put something like that on in Britain [in the last several years]. They do that every year in Scandinavia and it's always sold out. We did it a couple years ago with Alice Cooper others. [Ed. Note: Demon will perform there again this summer].

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