Damones

The story of Damones isn't your usual scenario in which a bunch of unknown and/or "lame" guys rise to fame through skilled demo coding or fast trading. The founders Zados and Irwin had both been active since the mid-80s on the C64, and earned a lot of fame (infamy?) inside and outside the Finnish borders for their drunken antics at copy parties. The same goes for the members they first recruited: Merit of Byterapers plus Hoffi and Trashman from Bloodsuckers. The famous graphician Reward also joined from Scoopex, but only to hitch a ride with them to a party in Sweden. Once they got there he rejoined his old team, and the angry Damones members avenged by leaving him behind as they returned home to Finland.

It was clear from the start that Damones was more about partying than creating quality demonstrations, a point proven by their first two intros which were not very serious and relied more on drunken text than skilled coding. However, during 1992 and 1993 Damones gained numerous talented members from well known groups, like the Finnish divisions of Magnetic Fields and Digital. Even the former Finnish section of The Silents visited Damones shortly before forming Pygmy Projects. While most of these people stayed in the group only for a short while, Damones still managed to release a respectable amount of products making them a real demo group. Unfortunately, their not-so-PC texts and jokes were often misunderstood, and some even got the idea Damones was a bunch of neo nazis.

As the best democreators of Damones only stayed aboard for a short while, the team started fading away around 1995. The only field they were active in was modem trading, and the Hardcore Hangover mixtape series from Irwin who was more involved in his work as a DJ than the scene. There were a few party-related releases on PC in 1996 and 1997, but Damones still couldn't be called very active on the demo front. The reputation of Damones as hardcore partyanimals was only on the raise, thanks to their newer members Duncan, Kakka and Flava who became (and still are) some of the most notorious partygoers in Finnish scene history. Traditional drunken Finnish behavior was soon followed by illegal stimulants, urination, fellatio and other similar stunts which would be shunned by your stereotypical computer geek.

In 1998 Damones made a surprising comeback to the world of demos on PC. The amount of releases wasn't massive, but the productions were quite successful. Damones were voted 2nd in the Assembly 1999 demo competition, and on Scenery 2001 they won the first place with DChat. In early 2002 they amused and/or shocked the scene world with a 10 years anniversary demo containing plenty of gay porn, and also with a bunch of photos from their "birthday party" featuring all sorts of bodily fluids and general weirdness. All in all, it is safe to say that Damones is stronger than ever. As the other legendary boozing group Exotic Men seems to have died for good, Damones will most likely hold their status as the most drunken crew in Finland for years to come.

Most of Damones' Amiga and PC releases can be found on their website http://www.damones.net/ along with a more detailed biography, memberlist and so on.

Amiga Scene Groups

Sources:
http://www.damones.net/
http://www.byterapers.com/
http://exotica.fix.no/
my own memory