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Death Angel: The dream calls for blood

21/10/13 || Ironpants

I’ve been on a throwback thrash loop lately and have resurrected my old fascination for this style of metal. That means going through my old collection and remembering the old days. And yeah, I lived, breathed, slept and ate thrash metal 24/7 for a period of my life, so it would be really strange if it hadn’t left some kind of trace in this ancient vessel some people would call a body. My reborn interest for thrash comes from looking at the documentary “Metal evolution – The series”, made by Sam Dunn, and there is one episode in the series dedicated to thrash metal. In episode 6 we are guided through the golden era, and those interviews with the old legends struck a galloping thrash chord in my Alzheimer infested brain, and like Frankenstein’s monster, I got up from my living room chair, made a noise described by my son to be something like “Uuuarghhhh, thrash ´til death” and I staggered in a mosh-like manner out to the garage and returned with my thrash collection.

My bastard son sat with me, afraid to leave me as he believed I just had experienced a stroke, and together we feasted on old records with Forbidden, Anthrax, Testament, Overkill and… Death Angel. The thing is that my mini-me is currently learning to play the guitar, and what is more cool to play, than just thrash metal? He has skipped all that soft crap that the normally gifted kids go through at the guitar lessons in school or whatever, and jumped to the metal part at once. There is of course a small danger in that, but hey, who am I to tell him what to do? The fact that I’m addicted to metal, and a responsible father who gives him valuable life lessons for free has nothing to do with it. So anyways, we were having a field day with my collection of thrash metal and what could be more convenient, than discovering that Death Angel was just about to release a new album? Talk about timing.

I was quite into Death Angel for a while, and first and foremost I liked their a little different, progressive approach. There are many times, even today that I´ve catched myself having the song “Voracious soul” on my mind. Of course, that is a long time ago, and the band has both split-up, got back together and changed their band members, released a couple of albums after that and not that long ago, ‘Relentless retribution’. That album didn’t really caught me, so lets dig in to this new one instead.

Lets begin with a couple of words about the album cover for once , it’s pretty sweet, and I think we have to blame the vinyl-junkies for this? I read somewhere that vinyl sales have increased with 720% on Amazon?? That is a pretty hefty increase in sales volume, and the interest for vinyl demands better artwork on your precious covers. I applaud this, as I think that it builds trust with the consumer by having a really good and original album cover. Good job on that one!

Even if they are not equally interesting, or progressive even, as they were in the old days, there are several riffs and chord structures coming from guitar heroes Cavestany/Aguilar that are different from the regular thrash formula. The guitars are not hesitating to take command through the whole album, as it should be in this style. It´s pretty exciting even after 10 spins or so and to be honest, I am impressed by how these “oldies” still got it. It’s fucken great, and they are skillfully staying on the original path that defines thrash metal. You could think that they would be tempted to explore into an even more modern song building tactic, erasing the borders towards classic metal or some other direction, but have no fear, Death Angel still know what they are good at and keeping it in that area.

Osegueda is still handling the vocals, and for that we thank him! His voice is set to standard harsh thrash vocals, but he´s not afraid to raid the territories of high pitch screaming and a little more melodic singing. The drums are solid as hell, with a big snare sound and fat bass drums, and the bass is allowed to be heard quite clear, and if you listen in headphones you hear a bass player that is dedicated to the cause. The sound picture in total is near perfect and especially the guitars have received extra attention from the production department.

Well, I can’t really say something that is bad on this album, and if you like me have grown up when the thrash metal culture was the best shit money could buy, I promise you that you will like this album. It’s solid good thrash metal that pays honor to the past without being retro. Still it feels like it’s lacking some ingredient, but I can’t really say something constructive on what it might be? But I guess it has something to do with that it doesn’t matter how good you are at making a thrash album today, if you have lived it once, it’s very hard to get an old bugger like me to really go ape-shit with this kind of music? I don’t know? But if I imagine my younger self listening to this back in 1992 or something, I would have been really impressed, so I’ll have to say in the end – this album fucken rips. Most certainly a good buy and worth repeated listenings, especially if you have some more old thrashers around and a box of brewski just standing there.

Information
Released: 2013
Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Website: www.deathangel.us
Band
Mark Osegueda: vocals
Rob Cavestany: guitars
Ted Aguilar: guitars
Damien Sisson: bass
Will Carrol: drums

Tracklist
01. Left for dead
02. Son of the morning
03. Fallen
04. The dream calls for blood
05. Succubus
06. Execution – Don’t save me
07. Caster of shame
08. Detonate
09. Empty
10. Territorial instinct – Bloodlust

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