Demon Days

Released in 2005, the follow up record to the virtual bands first outing and of the same name ‘Gorillaz’, Demon Days aims to go in a different direction from its predecessor having an overall much more fluid structure and more defined in the message it tries to deliver.

If their self-titled record was experimented, Demon Days keeps a much darker and grounded approach. The first track ‘Last Living Souls’ Sets the tone for the album, a story about making it through dark times only to come out at the other end of a tunnel. The first half of the album all the way up towards the iconic ‘Feel Good Inc’ has this dystopian feel to it, as if the album is controlled by the world it’s set in. The songs within the fist half our amazing. The already mentioned ‘Last Living Souls’ and ‘Feel Good Inc’ both really bring this albums theme into light, especially ‘Feel Good Inc’ which is THE Gorillaz song or at least one of the first songs one would think if they were to grow up in the 2000’s.

Other songs like ‘Kids with Guns’ with it’s funky baseline all building to this climactic pile of instruments to ‘Dirty Harry’ with it’s fairly on the nose story about the struggles of war going on in this time period really just set the vibe.

The album isn’t innocent of having its weaker songs but even then, I still feel like they overall contribute to the messages ‘Demon Days’ is trying to communicate to us. ‘O Green World’ Is allot of noise, a bit ear grating at times and the crow constantly squawking throughout doe come off as a bit much. Similarly, in the latter half of the album ‘November has come’ and even the iconic ‘DARE’ feel more filler then anything but does come off as a nice break from the albums overall concept.

The latter half of the album keeps the consistency going with the dramatic ‘El Manana’ Which is such a drastic shift after the energised ‘Feel Good Inc’. However, it does pick up again with this almost western inspired saloon type song in ‘Every Planet We Reach is Dead’ having this constant escalation that just goes on and keeps building to the point where the song feels as though it’s going to burst.

With the last few tracks Demon Days really hammers down on the narrative. ‘Fire Coming out of a Monkeys Head’ is less of a song and more of a spoken story, telling us about these monsters attacking this small town which the villagers are oblivious too. We come to the last two tracks which close out on what ‘Last Living Souls’ showed us at the start: Making it through the dark towards the light. ‘Don’t get lost in Heaven’ and ‘Demon Days’ is the only way the album could have ended, which keeps giving us these new sounds with some choir and reggae influence.

There are few albums that I can praise as highly as Demon Days. Its structure is tight, the story and concept it’s trying to tell is something that still rings relevant to today. The songs range from energetic and full of life to being more grounded in their emotions. It may not be my favourite Gorillaz record, but Demon Days is the bands best effort to this day.

Demon Days is available on CD, Vinyl and for streaming on Spotify and Apple Music.