Guangzhou's Demon & Eleven Children will leave you fascinated with debut full length
The psychedelic doom rockers' debut album, Demonic Fascination, is a fun seven-track opus that you'll be kicking for a while.
New stoner doom album Demonic Fascination, is a diabolical joyride, taking you for a spin from the moment you push play to the album’s epilogue “Drown in Hell,” a 10-plus-minute jammer.
Released worldwide on Aug. 18 via independent record label SloomWeep Productions, Demonic Fascination is the first full length for Demon & Eleven Children, a quartet that hails from Guangzhou, the capital city of Guangdong province in southern China.
Formed in 2022, Demon & Eleven Children’s music is a concoction of niche genres, such as proto-doom, stoner rock and psychedelic heavy metal. And just like their music, the foursome’s overall sound seems to be highly influenced by a smorgasbord of doom, gloom and psychedelic rock titans including Pentagram, Electric Wizard and Japan’s Blues Creation, who’s early 1970s album, Demon & Eleven Children, is arguably the inspiration for the quartet’s name.
On Demonic Fascination, the Guangzhou-based rockers relentlessly hit a heavy, jazzy punch with one slow headbanger after another. Tracks such as “Vertigo” and “Stabbed by Illusion” beckon you with vocals that are bewitching and instrumentals that are infectious. Besides lyrics that are poignant and refrains that are downright catchy, the album also sees the tasteful use of cinematic soundbites, as is per usual on a doom album. Demon & Eleven Children’s use of horror movie soundbites not only aids in drawing the listener into the ghoulish soundscape that is being formed but also, we assume, are meant to playfully mix in a dark humor element, as is the case with the soundbite at the beginning of the sultry blues ditty “Pot Girl Blues.”
All in all, Demon & Eleven Children on Demonic Fascination are smart and dexterous, having created a menace of a debut album that will leave you fascinated and yearning for more.