Night Demon – Firing Off the Blueprint

Monday, 15th June 2015

Dead Rhetoric: When it comes to building your fan base, you’ve had a lot of diehard, rabid people that are into the band- and it has probably been people in their 30’s and 40’s that grew up on a lot of the influences that you have. Have you been able to capture a lot of the younger generation of metal followers as well?

Leatherby: It’s interesting. It is hard for us to target any demographic, individually. You know, we can’t say we are going to go and play in front of a bunch of kids. The Raven tour helped us out a lot because there was an older demographic that had no idea there were even newer bands doing this at all- and now we have them in America. We’ve done a lot of cross genre stuff, which seems to work well for Night Demon because we can play fast, very punk, very raw, and very loud in a way. We will play death metal shows where there are 5 death metal bands and us. The old guys will be like ‘okay, this is awesome’, they like death metal now but this is the stuff they cut their teeth on. The younger kids are like ‘woah, this is something completely new that I’ve never even seen.’ Their first favorite band was already screaming at them, you know? There is melody to it, a structure, but its high energy, loud and heavy. There is the whole scene of the younger, traditional heavy metal heads that were born in the 90’s. That’s great because those people weren’t around when I was playing this in the 1990’s, it was just the people that were older now, they were at a point they had matured past it or it just wasn’t cool anymore. The internet wasn’t around to save it.

So I think the most important thing to realize in these days is that the mainstream is dead. Although it limits your chances of breaking through on a global level at the highest level possible, what it does is it preserves the genre of music that you do. What you have now… young kids to guys in their 60’s who have loved this music their whole lives, and they will never stop loving it, and they have access to it now. A lot of people are saying traditional metal is coming back and how does it feel to be back at a time while riding this wave- the reality is it never really went away, it’s just getting more attention now in concentrated areas because people are able to come together. I don’t think it’s a trend or a fad- it is what it is, it will continue on but it will have more attention from the true audience. The way it will get bigger is these people exposing it to other people- bands like us playing the Southwest Terror festival with bands like Sleep, the stoner rock audience. We are going to do the Day of the Shred festival in October with Weedeater, all these kind of bands, we are trying to land the Housecore festival with Eyehategod, a lot of death metal stuff, hardcore bands. They play us on Sirius XM radio right now, next to like Five Finger Death Punch- so as long as we stay true to ourselves and do what we do, and expose ourselves to what would be considered mainstream metal right now, it’s not selling out or hurting us. They always say the more douchebag fans that you have, the better you are doing as a band. (laughs) Which is true, in a way- I just think these people are getting smart, if we expose what we are doing to them in their circles and they like it- that’s a good thing.

There are a lot of snobs around, because it is an underground thing. I saw some posts on Facebook the other day where some guy was saying he couldn’t believe he saw this band playing Maryland Death Fest, it was so great that he hopes that they don’t tour, or do anymore shows because he got to see them. He didn’t want the band to do anything else. With Facebook, everybody has like their own website, and you don’t need to go anywhere else. You have your own circle of friends, and those people are like-minded that like the same kind of stuff, or you have a crossover group of friends from another part of your life that see what you are doing, and that’s how things spread. Oh – what’s this? People still listen to heavy metal? I think that’s how things catch on.

Dead Rhetoric: I think a lot of people believe that heavy metal is a genre that you get into at a certain age and then you grow out of it. Why can’t I continue to love the music that I was into in my adolescent and teenage years?

Leatherby: I felt those pressures too in life. I got away from metal for a little while because the scene got too agro for me, things changed a lot and nobody in Southern California gave a shit about what I was doing- it was Brent and I listening to these records. I played a lot of different styles, and it was good for me- as a metal musician, it was great to come back to it. The first heavy metal bands did not grow up on heavy metal, they grew up on the blues and jazz and soul music, pop rock and rockabilly. It’s good to expand and do that stuff- as a whole… let me put it to you this way. There’s a lot of things that happen, America gets a really bad reputation all over the world, for people saying rock is dead here and that heavy metal means nothing. Even Americans are starting to believe it- some feel they have to go to Europe to see these festivals. The truth is it is very alive and well here, for a band like us on our level it’s great. The reason why it’s getting a bad reputation is in the 1980’s, it was the number one musical genre. It was on MTV and on top 40 radio, so bands were playing arenas to 20,000 people on their very first record. Fast forward 20-30 years later, and some of these bands are still doing 2,000-3,000 seat places a night, making good money and complaining that Taylor Swift is doing arenas and they aren’t doing arenas anymore. The reality is, these bands need to start appreciating the fact that in 1988, those same 2,000 people were still there, and they’re the only ones who still care and followed you. They bought your records when you tried to change and be all stupid to appeal to the masses- you owe them this.

There comes a point in a career of a successful band that what you do becomes bigger than you as an individual, and you can’t be selfish like that. If you are going to take the band out, put out records and go on the road, you have to be responsible to what your fans want and you have to deliver. Or else you shouldn’t do it, or call it something else, you know. I do feel for bands like Metallica and stuff, those guys are in their 50’s and they have to play songs that they wrote when they were 18. If I look at my life when I was 18, I would never play the songs that I wrote when I was 18. Thank God they wrote good songs though- and I understand their desire to develop and grow as a musician. It’s not right to do that under the same moniker and project for the fans that got you there- at a certain point that just becomes big business. There are hundreds of people that depend on the name of this band, and I can’t imagine that kind of pressure. I see it both ways.

We try to make decisions on what we feel is true and what is right- and usually those decisions hinge on money. We’ve been offered sponsorships before- ‘hey, here’s 20 grand for your tour.’ What? Are you serious? ‘Yeah, all you have to do is put our logo on your t-shirts.’ And we have to think about this- we always think, well, what would Iron Maiden do? The blueprint has already been written- so you just have to follow the path of successful bands. Don’t look at the short term goals, if you are in it to win it, you have to look at your legacy. Nobody is going to respect you if your band ended and you have the most money. They will talk about you when you are gone because you stuck to your guns, you did what was right, you respected the fans and the community, and you kicked ass doing it.

Dead Rhetoric: After this touring and the fall festivals, have you already started developing the game plan for the follow up record?

Leatherby: Absolutely. It’s mainly just songs- we haven’t really thought about a concept for the album, as far as artwork or if there will be a concept towards the album. I do like conceptual records- or at least things that tie it together. Not just another album of just songs- we’ve started writing, but it’s really hard to write on tour. You play the same songs night in and night out, you don’t have a lot of time to sit around and jam, we had a couple days off on this tour and we decided to hole up and do some writing. Its good- we play on writing a couple months this summer. It will depend on the touring schedule, we are not a huge band so if we have to tour a lot off a record that’s because we really have to work the record. We don’t want to put out a record and find out we haven’t toured certain areas on the last record.

People ask us ‘well why did it take so long between the EP and the album?’ The EP went through 4 pressings, we went all over Europe and America, (and) we treated that as an official release. What we didn’t want to do was what 99% of all bands do… they get a deal, everyone knows the EP as it’s been out for a while, they have a name and been rocking the songs… they re-record those songs and it’s like, man. It sucks too, because we are on some record labels now that are really going to put this album out front, this will expose us to a lot more new fans. We want to put our best foot forward, so we are thinking that those 4 songs were some of our best stuff. It wouldn’t surprise me if years down the road some people say they just love that demo, the first record. We wanted to add that on there- but we did enough work that we decided that we can write 11 more bad ass songs and if people like it they’ll discover the back catalog. The pressure is there to write another album, and you can’t force creativity. I go through writers block a lot- and I know I can write, but sometimes I just don’t like what’s coming out. Sometimes I write a shitty song on purpose just to get it out. We can be super critical of ourselves – I was just listening back to something that we recorded last week and at the time I thought it was stock, now I think it’s really good.

Dead Rhetoric: I know that you are a big fan of NWOBHM, what would you consider 5 essential records surrounding that scene, and maybe one underrated record?

Leatherby: I’ll be as mainstream underground as I can, because I don’t want to give away too many of my secrets as there are some bands that I’m hording! (laughs) The first Angel Witch album, the self-titled Diamond Head record. Those are the big one-two that I can listen to and say this is it. Those are the albums that have all the elements already in it, that’s what I try to do with Night Demon. I would say Fire Down Under from Riot, even though I like a lot of early Riot stuff to me that’s the most complete record. I would say Demon – The Unexpected Guest, I do like the first record but I like that one a little bit better. To round it out, this is really tough, I was going to say Tygers of Pan Tang – Spellbound, but I am going to go with Jaguar – Power Games.

The unsung hero – a band called Mendes Prey, not a lot of people have heard of that. At the time they had just a 7” or an EP, I want to name a couple more. Le Griffe – Fast Bikes, and then Dark Star…I might even put that record in with my top five.

Night Demon official website

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