WICKED MARAYA started life in 1983, but in actual fact were called MYSTIC back then. In the years leading up to 1989, when they became WICKED MARAYA, they took their time to develop and finally produced an eight-track demo in 1988. This has now been put on one CD by the record company that also released the 30th anniversary version of their debut album “Cycles” from 1994. I have to thank Heaven And Hell Records for that, as it makes the picture of the band complete. Especially for the fans that have tried to find, buy, steal or copy this demo.

As for the musical direction, please forget what the band WICKED MARAYA was doing on their debut album, as MYSTIC is cut from a completely different cloth. There is nothing Epic about what I am listening to on “The Mystic Demos”. What we have here is a band trying to impress by playing straight forward and rather fast Heavy Metal, or what we now would call it Traditional Heavy Metal. The band is going at it like wildfire, and they are certainly not looking at taking any prisoners in the process. What this has produced will not be as compatible with what you are used to of WICKED MARAYA, but has more similarities with FLOTSAM & JETSAM, JUDAS PRIEST. EXCITER and ACCEPT.

There is only one big but in this process; the songs are nothing more than very fast, but just bog-standard Heavy Metal tunes with so many references to the greats of the scene that there is no way in Hell that you will recognise this as MYSTIC. WICKED MARAYA doesn’t come to mind at all, unless you are able to distinguish that the same singer has been used in both cases. Well, you would be right. In fact, of the people that contributed to this demo, the musicians were selected for what became WICKED MARAYA. So, as a decision-making tool as to compatibility of the musicians this was a good exercise. But what I am saying is that you don’t need to buy this CD for the outstanding music, but you do need to acquire this if you want your WICKED MARAYA collection to be complete. Unless you already have the original demo, then you can skip this “The Mystic Demos” altogether. As far as I’m concerned MYSTIC couldn’t even stand in the shadows of WICKED MARAYA.