Demilich released their highly-influential debut album Nespithe in 1993 and then broke up. The band has since reunited and has been playing festival shows, but no new material has yet surfaced. That seems like it'll change soon enough.
In a statement from Demilich on their Instagram, the band reveals that frontman Antti Boman has decided their next few shows might be their last in order to focus on new material. Demilich will not be accepting new show offers, and further states that the new material might never happen at all. Though we're hoping it does.
"¡Buenas tardes! Demilich will play tonight in Granada, and it's possible it will be our second last show. The unnamed member, whose first name is not Aki but starts with A, is pondering what to do, and why," said the band. "We're not accepting new gigs – unless it's in Wacken, Woodstock or Wuhan, or something interesting and different – until we get our new material out. And it's possible it will never happen. No promises, either way. Let's just wish 'Mr A' gets his things rolling.
"Tomorrow we'll play the possibly last show in Vitoria-Gasteiz. Be there. And here tonight! Oh, and these shows will be played with Mikko, the original drummer, for the first time in four years! More info on everything about the next week, only at demili.ch/mail."
In an interview with Bandcamp, Demilich frontman Antti Boman revealed the band has four songs that are nearing completion, and that he's hoping to get them out soon enough.
"There will be at least four songs, that's for sure. Well, nothing's for sure, of course—I'm turning 49," said Boman. "But we have four songs ready—er, almost ready. The finalizing phase, it's been taking time. But now I'll concentrate on that and get them out, and I have the plan and some riffs. I have the whole concept for the second album, but we'll see what happens. I can't promise anything—you must understand [laughs]."
Hey, it's better than the two-ish songs they had done in 2020, right? Boman also had a laugh about Demilich becoming legendary after they broke up, and seeing a photo of himself at a metal bar sometime around 1998. Which is of course how it always goes – great band flies under the radar, great band gets discovered years later and becomes legendary despite being less than popular while they were still around.
"In '93, when we stopped, I stopped everything. And, as the internet wasn't really big back then, I didn't see what happened. So I dropped the contacts, everything. I started to live the life that was expected: trying to get a job and family and a mortgage, and cool things people expect people to get [laughs]. And I struggled there a lot.
"Then there was this local metal bar that had opened up maybe a year earlier. And one day I was intrigued, and I went there, and there were younger people than me; I was an oldie already. And right on top of the bar was our promo photo from Nespithe. This was in '98. So it's like, 'What the fuck?' I talked to the owner, and he was like, 'Oh, you're from Demilich! The kids here listen to you a lot.' That's when I started realizing, and I started asking and following things, and I'm like, 'OK, it's actually not been forgotten, but vice versa.' Not much, but people had started to understand what was going on."
More importantly, you need to listen to Nespithe if you never have before. The 20th anniversary version is streaming below, which features the actual masters (and not just random CD rips) plus old demos. It's wild as hell.
