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Koko Ricky

A band so obscure it's frustrating as shit

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More than a decade ago, during those carefree days when mp3.com offered millions of free songs for download, I stumbled across an Italian band called Sangue Demonio, and to this day still have some 40 or so of their songs.

I've tried endlessly to find information about them on the Internet. There's no biography, the only band photos I've seen are low resolution and indistinct, the one website that displays their discography seems incomplete, hardly any mp3s can be found of their work and not a single review exists. Yet, they somehow managed to exist for about a 20 year period between the mid 80s and early 2000s (supposedly), releasing album after album of identical but highly idiosyncratic music that's difficult to define.

It's some deranged mix of gothic, rock, metal, synth, industrial, tribal, ritual and horror soundtrack, but sounds nothing like any band I've heard. It's particularly strange that not one real instrument is ever heard; even the guitars are tinny MIDI synths. Sometimes I feel like I'm their biggest fan. If you search for them on Google, several of the relevant pages are forums where I'm asking if anyone has ever heard of them.

If you care at all to hear them, these are the only links I've found that aren't broken.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sTQ-tfNHwc
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=233419
https://myspace.com/sanguedemonio

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Interesting, they look like they were around for quite a while and then just sort of disappeared.

A bunch of old pages are cached in archive.org's wayback machine, e.g.
https://web.archive.org/web/20041031210240/http://www.mz1.us/mp3s/bands/17/music.php
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.rancidgolem.veryrude.co.uk/*
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sanguedemonio.poshtarts.com/*

and some others.

EDIT: Having poked around a bit, I'm getting the suspicion that certain aspects of this band are made-up:
* They have 5 members - a guy and 4 women, some of whom supposedly sing - and yet in all the tracks I could hear, the only vocals were a male's voice, with some processing on it, and the instruments sound mostly synthetic. (I've only listened to a few tracks, so I could be wrong here)
* A lot of their photos look like heads photoshopped onto other bodies, like the pics here (NSFW, some nudity): http://usersites.horrorfind.com/home/gothic/rosemori/Bodyart.html
* None of the names of them or anyone related to them (media companies, photographers, managers etc.) come up with anything not directly related to their band.
* They seem to have too much information about them and too long a history to have this level of obscurity.

All of this is speculation of course, and obviously someone made that music. I just get the hunch that finding accurate information is so hard partly because there's more (or less) to this band then meets the eye. Happy to be proved wrong, you know more about them than I do.

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Cool stuff! Man, it disappoints me that there's actually LESS information about them now than there was way back when. I dunno what it is about their sound that enthralls me so much. It's just really different and really catchy.

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You weren't kidding when you said "identical." Certainly unique, but I guess I just don't "get" it. Makes me want to listen to Root though.

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There's this artist called Jensing that I can find virtually no information about, and only know about because my mom has one of her albums, and I listened to it a lot as a kid. I looked up the album and couldn't find so much as a release date. Of course, with her I have no evidence that that wasn't the only album she ever released, so it's not quite as mysterious as this.

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I've learned to cope with how even some of the best bands I've ever listened to rarely make it long after their first CD. Some bands I really like only have LPs or 7"s too. It sucks because I'd love to listen to more of them but for such deviated genres of music it's hard to get exposure.

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I think what makes Sangue Demonio unique is that there are SO MANY songs. I have 40 or so on my computer and the song titles I often find online don't match most of the ones I have. According to metal-archives.com, there are numerous albums.

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I've known this feel too. What's annoying is when a band has an unreleased album and it can never be reissued for stupid legal reasons. I'm looking at YOU, label responsible for not releasing Deaf Dealer's second album!

It's also annoying when I can't find a decent scan of an album cover. I've actually had to scan a couple of LP covers myself to make what would be the first high-res scan of them even exist at all (compare this to this).

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It's also irritating when a band has released their stuff online and it's only available from their website, and the site gets shut down for whatever reason :(

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I remember that band. The guitarist from Limp Bizkit was in it.

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I discovered this SW Ontario band called Monroe at a Halloween metal show. They were probably one of the best death metal bands I've ever heard. They had a MySpace, but I haven't been able to find it again since the first time I looked them up. I could probably ask the show's promoter if he has any of their stuff, but he's the most pompos douche I know, to the extent that he more-or-less killed metal in my town because bands don't want to deal with him either. I'll probably die never listening to them again.

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I remember when mp3.com was all kinds of good independent bands. Then cnet bought them, deleted everything, and made it a corporate whore site promoting the usual shit like 50cent. Cause we all needed to hear In Da Club for the 50 bazillionth time.

I think I have one song from Sangue Demonio. Something with rose in the title I think. Got it on some backup or another comp.

Another obscure band was Temple of Rain. I got three tracks of theirs of which one's a remix of another group's song.

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