Death Angel Relentless Retribution
by Mark Allen
Staff Writer
There are some who will weep, wail, and offer up woeful lamentations that this is the end of the Death Angel of old, that scruffy pack of young and hungry head-bangers who pummeled their way into thrash metal history in ’87 with their ferocious debut album, Ultraviolence. The naysayers will point accusing fingers at this turning point in the band’s career and claim Death Angel sold out and sacrificed their thrash metal roots on the altar of commercial viability. The kicker is, those who make such bitter accusations are not necessarily wrong. Relentless Retribution is to Death Angel what The Black Album was to Metallica, what Ritual was to Testament, and what Youthanasia was to Megadeth; in other words, a deliberate, calculated attempt at mainstream acceptance.
Thankfully, their attempt is pretty damn good.
Relentless Retribution finds Death Angel doing an excellent job of merging their aggressive old-school thrash with the slicker, beefed-up catchiness of today’s new wave of American heavy metal. They have one foot firmly planted in the past, but have also progressed to the point where they are willing to also embrace the more melodic metal of today, mimicking the approach favored by the likes of Trivium, Shadows Fall, and All That Remains. Make no mistake, your love, like, or loathing of this new Death Angel offering will be strongly governed by your feelings toward modern heavy metal in general. There is no denying the band has incorporated current trends into their overall sound, but they have pulled this incorporation off with pleasurable precision.
That is not to say the thrash of the past doesn’t still make an appearance. The album opens with “Relentless Revolution,” which is classic thrash metal at its finest, and closes with “Where They Lay,” which is absolutely pulverizing in its intensity. But in between these nods to yesteryear are some pretty blatant attempts at modern metal success, with “Opponents at Side” in particular practically begging you to sing along, so urgently catchy that it creeps dangerously close to emo-core territory.
Time and time again Death Angel reaches into their bag of tricks, pull out big hooks, and slap them into the choruses, transforming them into radio-friendly anthems with such ease you would think they’d been doing it since their embryonic days. Metal fans with narrow tastes who crave nothing but raw, brutal, unfettered aggression may find such catchiness to be a negative, but Death Angel makes it work, straddling the line between powerful heaviness and commercial credibility with startling finesse.
The band nimbly seesaws back and forth between retro thrash and current day catchiness. “Truce” and “Into the Arms of Righteous Anger” tear things up like a berserk badger; “Absence of Light” and “Death of the Meek” display the melody so prevalent in modern metal. There’s even an ill-fitting but still quite cool acoustic ballad (“Volcanic”) that strives for the same melancholy vibe that made Metallica’s “Unforgiven” such as smash hit.
Mark Osegueda’s vocals are suitably angry, spitting out the lyrics like sonic bullets and when he resorts to screams, he keeps it decipherable instead of devolving into guttural gibberish. He is ably matched by the other members of the band, with the guitars cranking out some killer riffs, ripping leads, and molten solos while the bass thunders out a low end hurricane. Drummer Will Carroll pounds the skins with savage fury, flowing effortlessly from full-throttle thrash fusillades to the more mid-tempo grooves of the modern heavy metal approach the band has embraced.
Bottom line, this is not the penultimate crossover metal album, but it is a mighty fine example of how to mix the old with the new. Today’s heavy music scene is dangerously close to oversaturation, rarely giving bands from the past a second chance, but Death Angel have come up with the proper formula to take another stab at resurrecting their metal relevancy.
Genre: Thrash metal
Band:
Ted Aguilar (guitar)
Will Carroll (drums)
Mark Osegueda (vocals)
Damien Sisson (bass)
Rob Cavestany (guitars, vocals)
Track Listing
1. Relentless Revolution
2. Claws in So Deep
3. Truce
4. Into the Arms of Righteous Anger
5. River of Rapture
6. Absence of Light
7. This Hate
8. Death of the Meek
9. Opponents at Sides
10. I Chose the Sky
11. Volcanic
12. Where They Lay
Nuclear Blast Records
Hardrock Haven rating: 8.3/10