For the 1972 album by Uriah Heep, see Demons & Wizards (Uriah Heep album).
Demons & Wizards is a Power Metal recording project conceived as a side-project of the metal bands Blind Guardian and Iced Earth. It is made up of the vocalist for Blind Guardian, Hansi Kürsch, and the guitarist of Iced Earth, Jon Schaffer. Schaffer writes the music and Kürsch writes the lyrics. The band's line-up during the recording of their first album in 2000 also consisted of Mark Prator, who was the drummer on a few Iced Earth albums, and Jim Morris doing most of the guitar solos, Morris also having worked with Iced Earth in the past.
The original goal of the band was to forge the different musical styles of both Iced Earth's dark melodies and Blind Guardian's powerful vocals into one sound. In fact, according to the musicians, the band name is meant to describe the two styles: the self-proclaimed demon-like themes and sounds of Iced Earth and wizard-like themes and sounds of Blind Guardian (The moniker "Demons & Wizards" was inspired by Hansi's wife always referring to him and Jon as "Demons and Angels." Hansi always corrected her that it is more properly stated "Demons and Wizards," in reference to Uriah Heep's album of the same name). The band met with a fair deal of commercial success, though not as much as either of their individual bands.
The idea for the band arose in the spring of 1997 after Kürsch and Schaffer became friends while touring together in their respective bands.
Demons & Wizards is their self-titled first album, who impressed both critics and fans of the everpopular heavy/power metal genre. Unfortunately it would be another 5 years until the follow-up album Touched by the Crimson King. The later album was recorded within the same style, inclusion and consistency. Touched by the Crimson King is based on the Dark Tower books written by Stephen King. The Crimson King is the antagonist in those books.