Album Review: Demon Eye – Tempora Infernalia

DemonEyeTemporaInfernaliaDemon Eye – Tempora Infernalia
Release Date: May 8, 2015
Record Label: Soulseller

Ok, so here’s the deal. I’ve talked about this kind of thing numerous times. With this renaissance that this 70’s inspired hard rock has been having over the past 6 years or so, it’s starting to become very easy to hear just who is doing it well. There are some bands that are doing it right with sincerity and full of heart and there are the bands that are doing it because it’s en vogue and the cool thing to be doing. Demon Eye just happens to be one of those bands that I feel like has their hearts in the right place but they fall completely short in the delivery.

Demon Eye’s latest album Tempora Infernalia is a great collection of riff laden, melodic songs that I feel suffer the fate of BLVS: Bad Lyrics & Vocalist Syndrome. Ok, let me stop being polite here. In a nutshell, here it is. Demon Eye has the sound down pat. It’s obvious that these guys love the kind of music that they are playing but they are completely incapable of writing a good song. Lyrically, the songs are just ridiculous: “Have you seen the signs? You don’t care if you live or you die.” Ok, and that’s not even the worst of them. Song for song, musically, Demon Eye blew me away but if you don’t have good lyrics a song isn’t worth shit. I mean, you don’t have to fucking be Steve Harris but c’mon folks, put a bit of effort into the writing.

Song after song I was met with the same three thoughts.

  1. Goddamn these guys can write some great fucking music.
  2. These lyrics are terrible.
  3. This guy’s voice is about as flat as the tires on my bicycle that’s been in my shed for 2 years. It was like nails on a chalk board.

Good riffs and a great production does not a great a band make. I feel like if these guys had a good singer and actually wrote good lyrics they very well could be one of my favorite bands. Musically, these guys knock it out of the park but again, just nailing 25% of it doesn’t cut it. I’ll be filing Demon Eye under one of those bands that I’m just going to have to try and forget that I ever heard. Maybe they’ll get it right eventually and I’ll be more than happy to rock it out but until them, this album will be residing in my Recycling Bin where it will slowly digested over a period of several thousand years.

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