Outsider (Limited Coloured Vinyl)

Ventura, California’s heavy metal institution Night Demon return with their third full-length album, Outsider.

For more than a decade, Night Demon have defiantly flown the flag of traditional heavy metal, unwavering in the face of shifting industry trends and unscarred by global calamities. Even as they spent 2022 touring heavily worldwide in support of their compilation album, Year of the Demon, the trio consisting of Jarvis Leatherby (vocals/bass), Armand John Anthony (guitar) and Dusty Squires (drums) continued working tirelessly behind the scenes. The objective? To perfect their first collection of all-new material since 2017’s acclaimed Darkness Remains album. Make no mistake: Outsider represents Night Demon’s boldest, most ambitious effort to date. Never content to rest on their laurels by rehashing past glories, the band have challenged themselves musically and lyrically, pushing creative boundaries and evolving their sound far beyond their NWOBHM-worshipping origins into something truly singular.

From a lyrical standpoint, Outsider marks Night Demon’s first full-blown concept album. To be sure, the band have always experimented with embedding thematic linkages between songs on each release, dating back to their 2015 debut album, Curse of the Damned. On Outsider, however, lyricist Jarvis Leatherby has dialed into a fully cohesive tale of alternate realities, mysterious portals, and the supernatural, intertwined with universal human feelings of alienation, loss, regret and revenge. Inspired by Leatherby’s li­felong affinity for horror movies as well as his pandemic-induced exile in the countryside of Northern Ireland, Outsider weaves a compelling yarn from its pastoral beginnings to its heart-pounding finale.