Death Angel, a thrash-metal band hailing from San Francisco during the glory days of the Bay-Area thrash movement during the 80's. Death Angel appered along with other thrash gigants like Testament and Exodus but their style is often mentioned as a Forbidden and/or Heathen mix. Death Angel was created by two brothers and three of their cousins and one quite amazing this is that one of the brothers was only 12 years old when the band was created and that was the drummer Andy Galeon and he was about 14 years old when they released their first album which I will come to later in this review.
The band has 5 members and they are:
Mark Osegueda - vocals
Rob Gavestany - guitars
Gus Peda - guitars (1982 - 1991)
Ted Aguilar - bass
Andy Galeon - drums
I guess I will start with the vocalist, Mark Osegueda, as in many thrash metal bands there are not many skilled singers for example: Sean Killian from Vio-Lence, Dave Mustaine from the well-known Megadeth, and we have John Connelly from Nuclear Assault. I would say that Mark is also a low-gifted vocalist but one thing that I think is very important and that is that all these singers are unique and Mark is has a special singing voice. He sings aggressive in this album and he does these crazy bursts of screaming and shrieks, if you have seen these lame horror movies where girls are screaming their throats out before they die, thats how Mark sounds time to time in this album. I just want to say that he is not good vocalist but he has a unique voice in my opinion.
Rob and Gus are the guitarists here and they sure does some great work with the guitars, they are both good at guitar solos which quite chaotic, sometimes a little melodic but they are played with great skill. The rhythm sections are solid and heavy, the riffing is also one unique feature to this band because of the riffs variation, complexity and structure. The riffs are catchy and yes they sound pretty much the same as other thrash metal bands riffs but these are a bit different, the riffs changes between slow and fast but the riffs in general are pretty fast anyway. There are not the same deal in all the songs, each song has its own riff and solo if I say so.
Ted the bass player, not much to mention about him except for some small things. It sounds to that Ted also uses some kind of distortion in some of the songs because the cranky and clear bass tunes changes to a lower and more distorted sound, but it doesn't sound so cool though. Anyway, Ted is a good bassist to my ears and you can hear his bass pretty good on this record but it is sometimes over-shadowed by the guitars.
And now to the little drummer Andy Galeon, 14 years old and plays like a maniac, this guy knows how to handle the drumsticks. Though there is some small, small glitches here and there but they are hardly noticed by a "normal" person that hasen't heard so much metal in his life. Andy is a great drummer on this record, I would almost compare him to Slayer and other aggressive and intensive thrash metal drummers.
Done with the members and all that is missing is the album and its songs plus the ending comments, the songs here are fast, heavy, catchy and they do not sound the same. "Final Death" is one of the songs that has a good structure with catchy shredding riffs and one thing that some listener maybe would notice is that the song reminds of very early Metallica stuff. The song is pretty simple both in its riffs and drum patterns. Then we have "Evil Priest" that has some of the bands fast riffing and chaotic soloing though the structure reminds a little from "Final Death". Songs that has more thrash in them would be "Mistress of Pain" and "Thrashers", both of the songs are intensive and the guitars are shredding and delivers many good solos. And of course we have our little super-drummer, Andy pounds beat after beat, drumroll after drumroll and so on. Then we can take the songs "I.P.F.S" and the ten minute multi-song "The Ultra-Violence". IPFS is more like a filler song on 1:50 minutes with some goofy talking from the band members I suspect, the song starts with some calm and melodic acoustics and later gets some more sound and speed but not a great song. And now the long song, "The Ultra-Violence" is an ten minute long instrumental solo-song I would say. The song is packed with solos, heavy and complexive riffing and shredding, the drumming is excellent becuase you can hear many different types of beat sections. Though this song maybe would be rejected by some listeners because of its lengh but it is a song that I would recommend to people who loves soloing and intrumental stuff.
That was it, now it is time for me to end this review. This album would sound like any other album to some people and it may sound completly different to others, I really enjoyed this because I love odd vocalists though I got annoyed be Mark's screams sometimes. This album is great to my ears and I deeply recommend this band and album to thrash metal fans and maybe to death metal fans as well. The band is playing high-quality thrash metal but you can also hear that the riffing reminds of death metal material, I would say that the band plays 90% thrash blended with 10% of death metal. This album is considered to be their heaviest and fastest and would very enjoyable to any thrash metal fan.
PROS
+ Unique vocals
+ Complexive and technical riffs and shredds
+ Awesome drum work from a guy at such young age
+ Good variation in the songs
+ The album is loaded the quality thrash
CONS
- Mark's screams may get on peoples nerves
- The ten minute long song may be boring
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
Evil Priest
Mistress Of Pain
Voracious Souls
The Ultra-Violence
In my opinion this is a great album and my final album rating will be a strong: 4.5/5
