The beginning of DEMONS & WIZARDS can trace its roots back as far as 1991, when ICED EARTH embarked on a 5 week tour of Europe, opening up for BLIND GUARDIAN. This was not only the start of ICED EARTH's career in Europe, but also the beginnings of a great friendship between the two bands which lasts to this day. The musicians shared a bus on the road for about five weeks, and never argued or had any disagreements, the like of which can be common place in these types of situations.

JON SCHAFFER and HANSI KURSCH became close friends, always staying with each other when visiting their respective countries during the decade that has followed. The two bands had always wanted to colloborate on a project at some stage in the future, this had been discussed since day one. However, both bands had very busy schedules, and more often than not they clashed.

It wasnt until 1997 that this dream would bear fruit. Jon was in Germany doing some promotional work for ICED EARTH's "Days Of Purgatory" album, and when he got a couple of days free, he took the opportunity to hang out with Hansi for a few days . On the first evening the two went out and consumed large amounts of alcohol and woke the next morning found themselves hung over and a little bored. Jon decided to pick up Hansi's guitar and started jamming and messing around on it. After a while Hansi started to sing some melodies over what Jon was playing, and after a while had the makings of a song. The two of them decided to go into the BLIND GUARDIAN studio and continue work on it. After a few hours, they had a song recorded.

After being friends for the past seven years, they discovered that they
had writing chemistry together, which was quite an amazing revelation, not to mention very rare! That fateful track actually ended up on the DEMONS & WIZARDS album as "My Last Sunrise".

Towards the end of 1998, the two bands' paths crossed professionally once again, when ICED EARTH opened up a few shows for the Guardians in Spain. Hansi and Jon were reminiscing about that day in the studio and after discussing it, they decided that the time then was right to collaborate on a project together, and made plans to get the ball
rolling the following year.

Jon and Hansi wrote most of the new material around the period of Jan-March 1999. What was unusual about this process, was that Jon and Hansi actually worked on the songs simultaneously on separate continents, relying heavily
on phone calls and Federal Express mailing. They had no misgivings about working this way, as they both pretty much knew what to expect from each other, and were more than confident in each others' abilities.

Basically, Jon would lay some riffs and ideas down on his eight track recorder and mail it to Hansi, who would then work on vocal melodies for the music. This was a change for Jon, who was used to writing vocal parts for most of his own ICED EARTH music. It made the creative process not only a lot less stressful for him, but more interesting for him as well, as he got to hear Hansi come up with totally different vocal ideas than he himself would have had he been writing on his own. Hansi relished the idea of writing new spontaneous lyrics in a different mold than he was normally associated, and a lot of the finished results were a lot darker and more sinister than what he normally did with BLIND GUARDIAN.

This was especially true for a couple of songs, where Jon decided to use some old ICED EARTH material that had previously been overlooked, material written before the band got a record deal. Going through some old tapes, he found some killer parts that he thought would fit perfectly with what he was writing. Some of these classic riffs can be found in the tracks "Winter Of Souls" and "Tear Down The Walls", the intro of which is actually a re-working of a killer unreleased ICED EARTH oldie called "Haunted House".

Hansi and JIM MORRIS were not aware of this however, and it led to a funny story during recording, when AL BURGE, Jon's sound man from the early days wandered into MORRISOUND STUDIOS whilst the album was being mixed and immediately recognized the song and begun humming along to the guitar parts, much to everyone's bemusement!

Later that year in June, Hansi flew to the US to stay at Jon's house in Indiana in order to put the final touches on their new material. Although

the majority of the writing had been completed, there were few things that needed to be brainstormed and and it was then that it was done. They also jammed the new songs in Jon's basement and it was here that they recorded their demo to shop the album around to prospective record companies. Jim Morris came up from Florida to help them record.

They decided to call the project DEMONS & WIZARDS. For those familiar with their respective bands, this was a
perfect moniker as it totally summed up the personas of these musicians, as well as the differing musical / conceptual styles of ICED EARTH and BLIND GUARDIAN. The name had it's origins in the good natured fun the bands used to poke at each other, a play on the classic good vs evil pattern, such as the way the bands look in their promo pictures, the Guardians always smiling happily and the ICED EARTH guys always looking serious! After throwing ideas around with his wife, Jon thought of the name after she suggested "Demons & Angels". Contrary to what has been written elsewhere on occasion, they did NOT name it after the famous Uriah Heep album of the same name, that was just a pleasant coincidence.

The next step was for Jon and Hansi to go to Florida in August to record the album. As always, the choice of studios was MORRISOUND, the difference being that this time, Jim Morris was going to be playing lead guitar on the entire album as well as helping to produce and engineer it. Jim is an accomplished guitarist himself, and plays with great feeling, having proved this in the past with his guest appearance on
ICED EARTH's track "Watching Over Me", where he played undoubtedly the greatest solo on the SWTWC album. Seasoned session drummer
MARK PRATOR played the drums once again. In addition to playing the majority of the guitar on the recording, Jon also used this opportunity to delegate bass playing duties to himself! On this recording he wanted to achieve a Gene Simmons' style slightly distorted bass sound. Being a closet bassist, this was something he really enjoyed, and it is a little known fact that Jon has played some of the bass parts on many of
the ICED EARTH recordings.

Everything went well in the studio, and the band recorded 12 tracks for their self titled debut album, as well as a couple of potential bonus tracks, including a cover version of the old CREAM classic "White Room". With the album complete and self financed, the next step was to find
the right record company to promote it. It was hoped to get the album released by Jan / Feb 2000, irrespective of which label it would be on.

There was naturally a lot of record company interest for this album, due to the high profile of the two musicians involved in the project, and many labels, including ICED EARTH label CENTURY MEDIA, were in the game.
Everyone in the business knew this was going to be hot property, so Jon and Hansi held out for quite a few months of negotiating before finally settling on the SPV label, quite simply because they offered them the

best deal. In December, they embarked on a successful two week trip to Europe, visiting France, Spain, Italy, Greece, and Germany to promote the upcoming album.

DEMONS & WIZARDS was released in late January 2000 in Europe. The response was overwhelming! The album sold extremely well, and earned the band some impressive chart positions. The album went straight into the Greek Charts
at No.1! They also reached No.35 in Sweden, and as high as No.13 in Germany, which is very impressive for a metal release, in fact there have only been about 5 metal bands who have ever achieved this feat, BLIND GUARDIAN being one of them. The album reached sales of 80 000 in its first THREE WEEKS of release in Europe, which is something
the band could be very proud of!

Jon and Hansi went to a selection of record stores in Germany to do some in-store record signings to promote the album, as well as one chaotic signing in Greece. There was a huge turnout for their appearance, numbering into the thousands, a figure unheard of for an event like
this! The atmosphere reached fever pitch, and the police had to be
called in order to prevent a full scale riot from starting. Things took a turn for the worse when a crowd ended up crashing through the shop window, and there were kids injured and general mayhem ensued. The hurt were taken to hospital, and the police advised the band to stay and keep signing to avoid more chaos.... 4 hours later the crowd subsided....
A crazy, but true story!

Originally there no plans to do any touring, due to various recording schedules of their main bands, but they received offers to play some European festivals, including the Gods Of Metal Festival in Italy, as
well as the Bang Your Head Festival in Balingen, Germany, where they played second on the bill just before The Scorpions.

Things have returned to normal now, the Demon and The Wizard are back in their respective groups, recording, writing and touring new material. The success of their collaboration was phenomenal, but the best news so far is that it is not over yet..... Yes there will be more to come....