Discovering Metal: Death Angel

The Ultra-Violence

The current lineup from left to right: Rob Cavestany, Damien Sisson, Mark Osegueda, Will Carroll & Ted Aguilar

So far, this year I have done many mainstays of Heavy Metal music. Starting with Iron Maiden and most recently Metallica. Now,I would like to talk about a band that isn’t as well known. In the Thrash Metal genre, these guys are one of the best and unfortunately get overshadowed by the Big 4 of Thrash Metal.

Death Angel is band that was founded in 1982 and started to pick up steam in 1985 with their Kill As One demo. Since that time and up to today they’ve released 8 albums, have toured around the world, and had broken up for about 10 years from 1991 to 2001; in 2001 they reformed for a benefit concert. Aside from their earlier accomplishments, I feel that Death Angel has created their best album to date with their most recent album The Evil Divide being one of my favorites.

Death Angel is from the San Francisco Bay area. This was one of the epicenters of Thrash Metal known as Bay Area Thrash. Many bands including Exodus and Testament still call it home. So, with the large amount of Thrash Metal being produced, Death Angel is tried and true to their surroundings and carry that torch. A couple things to be known about Death Angel are that when the band was formed the members were very young with most of them being in their early to mid-teens and also that members of the original lineup of Mark Osegueda, Rob Cavestany, Dennis Pepa, Gus Pepa and Andy Galeon were all related.

What really makes Death Angel unique, more than those little fun facts, is that they play Thrash Metal with melody in their music. This differentiated them from other thrash bands that were going faster and heavier. One thing I will say is that due to their break-up, Death Angel never when through that phase of going more commercial or changing their style to match the times.

I found out about this band in 2014 when I was listening to S.O.D. (Stormtroopers of Death) and Exodus. At that time, I was already loving the speed and heaviness of Thrash Metal, but Death Angel brought some color into my palate of music. With the melodic elements, it gave me a renewed scene of love for melody in my Metal music. Then I went and got into King Diamond, but that is another story.

Top 5 albums:

1) The Dream Calls for Blood

2) The Evil Divide

3) Relentless Revolution

4) The Ultra-Violence

5) Killing Season