Butchered Demos

Over the past couple of weeks at work my friend and co-worker Stephen Ward (who has just created a banner for me. Keep your eyes peeled for it's appearance!) had just got sick of listening to Weird Al Yankovic 8 hours a day so he decided on a change of band. Now hes decided on Dragonforce (formerly Dragonheart ) and is now playing that all the time. Thing is he loves it more than me by a large margin.

I love their unrelenting hyperactive speed and ( in later albums especially ) complete madness (things that are missing in their ballads which I'm sure they feel obliged to do... DON'T. The're basically your normal songs with the decent bits removed, leaving in the cheeseyness and naff lyrics.) I first listened to the Dragonheart demos from mp3.com back in late 2000 and really liked them. Thing is it took me till 2006 before buying there albums (which they had done 3 of them by then), think I just forgot about Dragonheart ( then changed to Dragonforce ) in the 3 years till their first full length album came out ( think it was literally first couple of weeks in uni I got the Dragonheart demo songs but they didn't release their first album till they AFTER I finished uni. Easy to forget to do something in three years, significant chunk spent drunk/studying.)

The sound Dragonforce's demo is pretty dam clear and tight in the demo songs. Very impressive for a demo ( even more impressive when supposedly they were recorded in a week. ) The first album entitled Valley of the damned is just odd because it's just plain different. After the completely pointless first track Invocation of Apocalyptic evil ( a Bullsh*t track as mentioned in my previous blogpost GOD DAMN BULLSH*T TRACKS!!!! ) Valley of the Damned from the first Dragonheart demo starts up. First thing you notice is the keyboard doing more than was in the demo. When the vocals start up they sound like the singer ZP Theart ( how the hell do you pronounce that?! Comments welcome.) is about 3 miles away. They've gone insane with the reverb, acidently set it to 100% wet. Especially with Dragonforces music the vocals just sink down into the mix and just loose the punch they had in the demo. This continues throughout the album. As well as the mix on the re-recorded songs you notice Dragonforce has tweaked little melodies and bits here and there. This is most blatant on Black Winter Night ( Is it me going insane or shouldn't that be Black Winter's night? Have I become what I hate? Some nitpicky git moaning about the tiniest bit of iffy English? ). Just look at this list below.

• as the rivers run dry ( first time only )


• Prechorus (on the endless seas of madness ) now with overtly exuberant keyboards.


• Weird sudden stop in the music just before the main chorus then guitar does a dive bomb.


• Chorus .... COMPLETELY DIFFERENT! Different lyrics, different melody


• post chorus different lead guitar


• no more tommorow... dieing of sorrow sung by
  ZP Theart instead of shouted by band.

And that's before the main solo! It just feels like Dragonforce were obliged to change bits of the songs because the fans might not like the idea of paying for an album and getting only 3 new songs. I personnally much prefer the original demo versions of the songs. So much so that that's what I brought into work to listen to, not the first album versions.



Another example of different between demo versions and album versions now. I bought Soilwork's Figure Number Five pretty much as soon as it came out and it was a special limited edition (a decent limited edition... not like some sh*tty ones, eg... I got a "Special edition" of Beneath The Remains by Sepultura but it just took the piss! The only extra stuff on it was a couple of "drum tracks" (basically the ghost tracks that they played along to when they were doing their main recording. Basically sounds like the final recording but cack quality and no vocals! Just..... why??? Surely nobody is interested in that?)). The extra thing was a CD which contained the songs that were on Soilwork's first demo which is cool. I listened to them and the one song that instanly grabbed my attention was Wake Up Call . This song was just class, even in the nasty sound quality of the demo, It just had that nice build up and a decent chorus ( simply put it goes Wake up, wake up, wake... up... CALL!. What more do you want? ).

I read up on these songs and found that they were all re-recorded for the first album. Coolios! Wake Up Call in decent quality! I bought the first album and looked at the back cover immediately to see if it was the case. I saw My Need, In a close encounter, Skin after skin and Steel bath suicide there but where the fudge was Wake up call? Saddened I just accepted the fact it wasn't there (along with Bound to illusions and put the album on my CD player. Listening through I heard the re-recorded versions of the demo songs and was delighted in their new nice quality recording ( although where the hell did the clean vocals go? They had clean vocals on the demo but dropped them for Steel bath suicide and The Chain heart machine. When they brought them back in A predators portrait they were class!).

I got up to a track called Demon in veins and within 5 seconds I instantly recognised the intro to Wake up call. WTF is going on? To my absolute bemusement I realised that they changed the vocals especially the chorus. It now goes Demon... demon... demon... demon in VEINS! ......... bury head in hands.... That just sound ridiculous. Wake up call sounded ace ( I mean. even Rage against the machine (don't just call them Rage. I keep on thinking your talking about the heavy metal band Rage when your actually talking about Rage against the machine) got away with just saying Wake up repeated for decades... I couldn't stand it with Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
repeated.
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
SHUT UP!
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
STFU now!
Fuck you I won't do what you tell me
Thats it! If you won't STFU I'll just break your neck!
Fuck you I CRIK.....
Ahhh thats better.
). Just .... why? Just an unecessary and ridiculous change. They didn't do too much to the other songs but this is just daft. Maybe just me moaning but if I was asked to cover it then it would most definately be the Wake up call version and not the Demon in veins version.

I wonder how many other bands have done this? Made an awesome demo but then butcher the songs for their first album. Oh and Dragonforce... DON'T WRITE ANY MORE FOOKEEN BALLADS!. See you all next time.