Demons And Wizard Views

General Goods

Demons & Wizards is a power metal band conceived as a side-project of the metal bands Blind Guardian and Iced Earth. It is made up of the vocalist for Blind Guardian, Hansi Kürsch, and the guitarist of Iced Earth, Jon Schaffer. Schaffer writes the music and Kürsch writes the lyrics. The band's line-up during the recording of their first album in 1999 also featured Mark Prator, who was the drummer on a few Iced Earth albums, and Jim Morris doing most of the guitar solos, Morris also having worked with Iced Earth in the past.

The original goal of the band was to forge the different musical styles of both Iced Earth's dark melodies and Blind Guardian's powerful vocals into one sound. In fact, according to the musicians, the band name is meant to describe the two styles: the self-proclaimed demon-like themes and sounds of Iced Earth and wizard-like themes and sounds of Blind Guardian (the moniker Demons & Wizards was inspired by Schaffer's wife always referring to him and Hansi as Demons and Angels . Hansi always corrected her, since he claims to not be at all angelic , and that it is more properly stated Demons and Wizards , in reference to Uriah Heep's album of the same name). The band met with a fair deal of commercial success, though not as much as either of their individual bands.

The band's first full-length release was in 1999, with the self-titled album Demons & Wizards. In 2005, the band released their second album entitled Touched by the Crimson King. Touched by the Crimson King is partially based on the The Dark Tower series of books (written by Stephen King), in which the Crimson King is the main antagonist.

As we had time to share some serious moments with each other during the 70000 Tons of Metal cruise (somewhere on the oceans of time) Jon [Schaffer; Iced Earth & Sons of Liberty] and I had finally found the chance to put our minds together for a possible next Demons & Wizards album. We cheerfully simultaneously announced our wish to start working on it as quickly as possible. Although time is an issue for both of us we nonetheless decided to start songwriting together during the European summer festival season when Jon will be in Europe for Iced Earth performances. During that season we will use every possible moment to complete as much material as possible.