The Demonics are great American music
11/15/2025
What Chief Inspector Lee says about five singing surfers from Los Angeles in the movie Rush Hour also applies to a three-piece band from San Francisco. Because the Demonics can basically be broken down to this simple formula: the Beach Boys with a good dose of electric guitar and a tiny pinch of horror. But there's not really a name for it. Hardsurf? Surfpunk? Motorpsycho?
As a further parallel to the surf rock of the sixties, an above-average number of songs are dedicated to motorized locomotion. There is, for example, the somewhat tougher interpretation of Little Honda or This bike of mine, which has been rewritten for a two-wheeled vehicle. Perhaps the three wave rockers' best motorcycle anthem, however, is 750-Four, composed by singer Russ Wright.
On four wheels, on the other hand, instead of Japanese material, they prefer to sing about Chrysler Corporation products - sometimes dedicated to specific makes or models such as Super Bee or Jesus Chrysler Super Stock, sometimes a more general commitment such as Mopar or no car. Of course, the girls occasionally get behind the wheel too, for example in Dunebuggy Denise or She-devils on wheels.
The demonic love song Regan has nothing at all to do with cars, but is too good to go unmentioned - and still elegantly builds a bridge to Mother Superior, which is more or less a step up from Little old lady from Pasadena. Here, it is not the granny on the boulevard, but a nun on the drag strip who makes the tires smoke.
However, we are no closer to answering the question of musical classification. Let's just keep it simple like Lemmy Kilmister: "It's all rock 'n' roll."
