A Ripple Conversation With Alex From Sonic Demon

Italian psychedelic doomsters Sonic Demon are one of the best up and coming bands in the scene. Their sound, which brings together proto-metal, doom, and fuzz rock into a riotous explosion they dub “acid fuzz doom”, is pure rock and roll chaos at its very best. Since 2020, Sonic Demon has released three EPs/albums: Doom 2020, A Thousand Suns, and their debut full-length, Vendetta. Each has represented an evolution in the band’s sound. The following conversation was had between myself and Alex, their frontman and guitarist.

 

How did you decide on the name Sonic Demon? What was the inspiration? How does it relate to the sounds the two of you create?

 

The name Sonic Demon came to me way before we even started playing together, I thought it was fascinating and even strange that nobody used it before somehow. Originally though it wasn’t clear how it would have turned out to be musically speaking. I was reflecting on it and the only thing I could say is, being that I am interested in the occult and esotericism, it would probably get back to the Greek concept of ‘’daimon’’ as the superior self of one being, often related to the creative power of one individual. Later on of course we realized that playing together we were not necessarily making ‘’spiritual’’ stoner doom of some sort, as probably I was initially expecting it to be. Still, you can see a glimpse of the more psychedelic and mystical approach in the three track Ep called ‘’A Thousand Suns’’. This is how things were for us back then.

 

How did the band get started? I know you guys have been friends for a long time, but what spurred you to start the band? Was this the sound you always had or did this evolve as stoner/doom became more popular?

 

We started playing together in May of 2020. During the pandemic I was seeing that I needed to get back to being involved in my lifelong love for music and, besides, there was nothing much to do too. So I asked Pier if he was interested in playing some drums for these riffs that I had in my head and he agreed to do it, and we started jamming in a garage. We were pretty much having fun together and we didn’t know what to expect really, but we managed to get the best out of the very short time that we had to dedicate to the project as we are usually pretty busy with our own lives. Our sound came out organically - nothing fancy involved and we were going to use the obsession that we both have had for a long time for Black Sabbath, Electric Wizard and many other bands in all the stoner-doom field as a reference I would say for sure.

 

Your sound is clearly influenced by doom legends such as Electric Wizard and proto-metal like The Stooges. What are some of your other influences and how do they feed into your music? When you’re recording do you listen to your influences more or do you try to keep that separate during the writing/recording process?

 

Yes as I mentioned before, we have both loved Sabbath since we were kids! And back then not many people our age that we knew were listening to this kind of stuff… We were a lot into Iron Maiden too with our gang when we were twelve/thirteen and already playing music with some other guys that then eventually disappeared, taking different roads. After that obviously we got into the more extreme side of things with Metallica and Slayer, a pretty usual path I would reckon, to death and black metal. The first time I listened to Darkthrone’s ‘’A Blaze In The Northern Sky’’ I was fucking blown away. I remember I thought that my friend should have known about that stuff immediately, and we were very damn young but we were already consuming Motorhead, Venom and Bathory’s CDs a lot. Then of course growing up and starting developing some love for mind-altering substances too we came in contact with a genre of music that became way more our focal point for a while, meaning Sleep, Electric Wizard. In the meantime we also started to discover so many cool bands from the Seventies that are way more obscure than the usual Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. The story is long but frankly each of us has had his favorite bands for many years and I can say that Stooges and Hawkwind played a great role in my life personally. Still this doesn’t mean that I am trying to steal from the bands I love directly when I am writing music, that is really quite the opposite… I try to do something that represents me and works well for us.

What gear do you use? Is there anything (pedal, guitar, etc.) that helps create your sound the most? If you could have any gear to improve your sound, what would you add or change?

 

The gear topic is always controversial I think because there are so many fucking guitar and bass pedals and other stuff around that you can get lost in a sea of madness. I try to keep the pedalboard as minimal as possible. The main pedals are of course FUZZ as my favorite. I used so far an old and rusty Boss hyper fuzz until I got myself a Dunlop silicon Fuzz Face to start messing with it. I sometimes even use a Russian Green Big Muff but not for the main riffs so far, only for some details basically. Only recently I started using an overdrive that is giving the new stuff we are making an interesting twist. Then I always use a wah, both vox and crybaby. For the modulations I love the delay. I have more than one analog delay that sometimes I play together. In addition I use for some solos or for some more atmospheric parts an Ehx small stone phaser and a stereo chorus that can give an over-the-top edge to the whole thing. The only guitars I play for Sonic Demon are a Gibson Sg from ’98 and a quite new epiphone Sg as I found that their quality has improved a lot lately. I have always been obsessed with SGs even though I have a Fender Stratocaster but I just can’t use it for our music. So far I used only standard Orange amplification too. If I had to think of some gear to improve our sound, I would only look for something that could make us even louder than we are now!

 

What are some of the lyrical influences on the first album? Do you see those carrying over to the second album or do you think you’ll go in a different direction?

 

On the first album I gather most of the influences from my own experiences and personality in a way. I think this is really self-expression for me and if someone else can relate to it, that’s great. Sometimes they are mixed with a more occult and supernatural approach, still it comes from what I read and the visions that I might have. I would say that together we pretty much agreed that our music should make the listener feel something. We definitely love music that grabs you by the balls and often we feel like in the contemporary stoner doom scene there’s so much apathy in the feeling and in the lyrics too that we got bored of that from time to time. In the next album I know we are taking even a more in your face approach both sound and lyrics wise besides some more psychedelic tinges that are part of our music by the way, too.

 

I know you’re very interested in the occult and, in particular, Aleister Crowley. What influence, if any, has that had on your music? Does it influence how you live your life?

 

My interest for these topics goes way back to my early life. Mysticism has had an impact on me since I was very young in ways that I can’t even describe properly. Then I was wondering if I had to incorporate it in the music we were creating but I came to the conclusion that it is not something that you have to consciously decide. If it happens it reflects itself in ways that aren’t necessarily clear to the mind I think.

This is not something that has to be forced, I can feel it whenever it is, especially seeing how much all this thing has been abused by rock-metal bands through the years and so many people who haven’t a clue on what they are doing or portraying. I relate to some of Crowley's teachings, philosophy and practices, not to Crowley himself as a person as he seemed more like a channel for something that he couldn’t even completely incarnate himself as a human being, but that’s fine I guess.

 

Where is Sonic Demon going from here? Do you anticipate adding a bassist so that you can play live?

 

This is something for which we don’t have an answer for now. We have discussed it and it seems that adding a bass player for Sonic Demon is more difficult than one can think… We would play live if it happens but it is not the main focus right now for us. Also for me it can be kinda difficult playing and singing at the same time so that is not something that I can take lightly.

 

How do you see your sound evolving? What can we expect from the next album?

 

It is going to be nasty, that is for sure. We are trying to go in an even older sounding direction at the moment as this is what we like and feels good for us. Still trying to be loud and filthy too.

 

If you could play a show with any band, who would you choose?

 

Hard question actually, I don’t know if I can say one band really. Probably opening for Electric Wizard would be rad.

 

If you could do a collaboration with any artist, who would you work with?

 

I would say Aiwass is a project that we respect and would be cool to do a collaboration with, maybe one day… Also we like a lot Devil’s Witches as one of our main influences in contemporary music and that was something that could have happened, but now it isn’t going to happen anymore because of other projects on their part. So yeah we are open to collaborations for sure but we have a feeling that doing things on our own will be the only way for the next future.

 

-Osiris