DARK ANGEL

Forty years, and multiple seismic shakeups later, Dark Angel have returned with the spine-shattering Extinction Level Event, their first album of original material since 1991’s colossal Time Does Not Heal. “Musically, lyrically, and vocally, I’m so stoked about this album,” says Hoglan, the veteran drummer-of-all-trades and timeclock behind almost too many influential metal groups to count – Testament, Dethklok, Strapping Young Lad, Fear Factory, and Death graduate tribute band, Death To All. “I’m really excited about Dark Angel right now, and everyone who’s heard the new album is losing their minds. Every time I’d finish a song and send it over to the guys, everybody was, ‘Gene, this is my favorite song!’ ‘No, this is my favorite song!!’ ‘Dude, this is totally my favorite song!!!” That’s never a bad sign.”

Extinction Level Event features new guitarist Laura Christine, and a new level of production, thanks to the advancements in technology since the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Yet, the album follows the twisted barbed-wire path and innovative approach of fan favorites, Darkness Descends and Leave Scars, which remained landmark extreme thrash records decades after their release. That’s hardly a surprise since the majority of the lineup for the album is the same as on the aforementioned releases.

The title track of “Extinction Level Event” was written by guitarist Jim Durkin, a decade ago, long before he suffered from severe liver disease, and, to the surprise of everyone, passed away in 2023. “Jim Durkin left us with this badass tune,” Hoglan says. “It is so Dark Angel and I’m just so excited about it. We made it the lead-off song on the record, not as a tribute to Jim or because of sentimental reasons – like, here is the song that Jim left us – but because it’s just a totally killer song. He wrote it ten years ago, and by today’s standards it’s still ball-crushing.”

Fast and aggressive, “Extinction Level Event” is as fierce and infectious as Dark Angel’s best songs and features the band’s heralded bombastic riffs and vocal structures. Hoglan and guitarist Laura Christine wrote everything else on Extinction Level Event, each song rivalling the ferocity and musicality of the title track; Christine co-wrote five songs, and her writing style rubbed off on Hoglan. “Atavistic,” for example, is a full-on three-minute thrash metal barrage. “It’s primitive, it’s raw, and it takes you right back to the days of super-aggressive thrash metal,” Hoglan says.

Other songs are a little slower, but no less incendiary. “Woke Up to Blood” is a tangled rollercoaster of jagged riffs and syncopated beats, the title of which stemmed from a dog attack. “[Guitarist] Eric Meyer came in with a big, nasty cut on his arm,” Hoglan says. “We asked him, ‘Eric, what happened?’ and he told us about how his wife’s dog attacked him in the middle of the night. He said, ‘Dude, I was lying in bed asleep and then I was just bleeding profusely. I woke up to blood.’ And I went, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I gotta write that down in the ‘notes’ section of my phone real quick.”

Another track Gene describes as a “total onslaught” is “Terror Construct,” which he wrote about the way the media and corporations team up to spread fear among the masses so they can continue to fill their pockets. “There’s no question about it,” Hoglan says. “We are force-fed fear. It definitely comes at us from all sides – the left and the right – and it’s everywhere, you can’t escape it because it comes from all angles. It’s terrible, but that’s how our society is getting wired. People are forced to live in fear all the time because, for the networks and the big corporations, fear means big money. If you put fear into the audience, they stay glued to the television and they watch all the commercials.”

The seeds of Extinction Level Event were planted in late 2013 between the time when Testament stopped touring to work on their new record and Hoglan was scheduled to work on his next major project.

“I finally had some time, so I said to Jim and vocalist Ron Rinehart, ‘Hey, I kinda have some time now. Would you guys be interested in trying Dark Angel again?,’ Hoglan recalls. “Because every time I’m over in Europe or some other country, the promoters of all these festivals and journalists are always asking, ‘You ever want to bring Dark Angel back? Let us know. We’d love to get some Dark Angel over here.’ Jim and I had spoken about it, and he said, ‘Hey, it sounds like fun. Let’s see what we can do.’ That’s when we put a toe in the water to find out if this would even work.”

The band played a number of dates in Europe and South America. Then, in late 2014, Hoglan and founding guitarist Jim Durkin got together to write a bunch of riffs. Since Durkin had established a lucrative career outside the music industry and Hoglan was busy touring with Testament and working with Dethklok, Death To All, and other projects, it was difficult for the two longtime Dark Angel members to coordinate their schedules. “It didn’t help that Jim was living in Los Angeles and I was in San Diego,” Hoglan says. “But we did as much as we could, and it was really fun to be jamming again. And the thing that put the cherry on top was that we’d all grown up as human beings a little bit. So, we had really good communication.  We weren’t just a bunch of 20-year-old kids yelling at each other or getting pissed off over stupid things. It was just such a fun vibe. And we’ve always been a family. We’ve always felt like one. So, we were like, ‘Hey, let’s book some more shows.”

After the first batch of writing sessions for Extinction Level Event, Hoglan had to put writing for Dark Angel on hold until late 2022. With other obligations behind him, Gene laser-focused on Dark Angel, listening back to the jams he and Durkin made earlier, and writing more than 10 new songs over the next three months. With a full album of pummeling new songs, Hoglan flew to Vancouver to track the album at the Armory. There, he and his bandmates worked with Rob Shallcross and Mike Fraser, and over a few sessions, Dark Angel had recorded everything but the vocals.

“Mike and I have worked on a number of occasions before, dating all the way back to the Strapping Young Lad, The New Black, Hoglan says. “He mixed all the last AC/DC records and some classic Aerosmith stuff. We laid down all the drums and as soon as that was done we got right into the guitars. Everybody came up and laid a little bit down and it was an amazing experience. Then, all we had to do was get time with Ron to do the vocals.”

While Extinction Level Event is informed by all the playing and recording experience Hoglan has gained over the decades, it’s deeply rooted in skull-bashing thrash and easily could have slotted into the band’s catalog after their fourth album 1991’s Time Does Not Heal. It’s more than a tremendous comeback from well-respected thrash pioneers, it’s a new chapter for the band – despite the tragic death of founding guitarist Jim Durkin in 2023 – and represents an authentic tribute to the foundations of extreme thrash, while putting a foot forward to a future where anything is possible.

“One thing Dark Angel was really, really good at was reinventing ourselves from album to album,” Hoglan says. “None of our four records ever sounded like each other, and that’s why this album will fit perfectly in with the rest of our catalog. It’s another reinvention for Dark Angel, but it’s still really, really heavy.”

No one but Gene Hoglan could keep the heart of Dark Angel burning over the decade like an industrial furnace. Even though he has ventured into multiple styles of thrash, extreme, and experimental metal, he will always cherish thrash, the music form that launched his multifaceted career. As a teenager, Hoglan was already a dedicated drummer and a diehard headbanger who was a fixture of the LA metal scene. Before he joined Dark Angel, he was the lighting tech for Slayer and other underground metal bands and traveled with Slayer on their first tour.

Durkin and bassist Rob Yahn formed the band Shellshock in 1981 and recorded the demo “Into the Inferno” in 1983 before they were hit with a cease-and-desist from another band named Shellshock and changed their moniker to Dark Angel. Three demos later, Dark Angel landed the song “Welcome to the Slaughter House” on Metal Massacre VI, which also featured tracks by Possessed, the Obsessed, Hallow’s Eve, Nasty Savage and others. They followed their compilation with their first full-length We Have Arrived in 1985. Dark Angel continued working on new material, including the scorching “Merciless Death,” “Perish in Flames,” and “The Burning of Sodom.” That’s when the Jack Schwartz, the band’s drummer from 1983 to 1984, left and Hoglan happily took his place.

“When I joined, they were already a killer band and they were on the cusp of things,” Hoglan said. “And when I came in, Jim finally had a partner in musical crime. We both wanted everything to be really heavy and brutal. Like, the sky’s the limit for heaviness. Even with Jack in the band, the members of Dark Angel had five different directions they would’ve liked to see the band go in. When I joined, we finally had a majority of two guys who wanted the same thing. We wanted to be a smack to the jaw, with music that was as savage as we could make it. We wanted to cut heads off with our music.”

Durkin and Hoglan wrote the vast majority of the band’s second album Darkness Descends, which included the blazing title track, the face-scorcher “Death is Certain (Life is Not),” and the eight-plus minute epic “Black Prophecies.” And Hoglan’s demon-crazed performances on “Merciless Death,” “Perish in Flames” and “The Burning of Sodom” brought Dark Angel to a new level of brutality.

“We were already bros, we were pals, so it was a pretty seamless transition for me to step in and work with Jim to make the band way heavier,” says Hoglan. “Our vocalist had some outside interests that didn’t blend with what we wanted to do, so we really had to work hard with him to get a great performance. I wouldn’t call it coaching. It was more like threats and hazing from me and Jim. We were pretty brutal with him in the studio to get him to perform the songs with the right kind of savagery and anger that they needed. But he definitely stepped it up. You can’t say that We Have Arrived had the same kind of vocals as Darkness Descends.”

In search of new ventures, Yahn left Dark Angel after he tracked the bass parts for Darkness Descends, which paved the way for Mike Gonzalez. The vocalist’s decision to quit less than a week before the band was scheduled to launch a tour for Darkness Descends led to a far more complicated situation. “He started getting into some things that didn’t blend well with the band’s touring schedule,” Hoglan explains.

“Meanwhile, Darkness Descends was blowing up and we were scheduled to tour with Possessed in early ’87. So, Jim Drabos, a friend of ours from a band called Death Force stepped in to grab the mic for us, and he did a great job.”

Impressed by how quickly and easily Drabos vibed with the rest of the band, Dark Angel asked him to step onboard. Hoglan was already writing songs for the next album and was hoping the singer he was working with would embrace the opportunity to take part. However, he wasn’t interested in singing on a new album or even playing any more shows.

“It was kind of strange,” says Hoglan. “He said, ‘Thank you very much, guys. It was always my dream to tour the United States. I just did it, and now I’m gonna quit the music industry. My dream was just fulfilled, and now I’m done.’”

For the next 10 months, Dark Angel searched long and hard for a new vocalist. Frustrated, they tried to make the band work again with “the old vocalist,” but after a few shows together, it was clear that they needed fresh blood. They auditioned many singers but couldn’t find one who would fit the band. As it turned out, the perfect match was Ron Rinehart, a guy Hoglan had seen before singing in the LA band Messiahs. Hoglan and Durkin thought Rinehart was a great vocalist, but weren’t impressed by his band, which lacked the ferocity he sought in a vocalist. Jim reached out to Rinehart anyway to ask him to audition for Dark Angel, and as soon as the band started playing, Rinehart picked up the mic and started to roar.

“Jim went, ‘Man, I wish we had this guy all along,’” recalls Hoglan. “I felt the same way ’cause Ron was so enthusiastic, so into it. He was the polar opposite of our other vocalists. He had a good work ethic. He was ready to put the time in. He was a cool guy, and he had a great look. So, we threw Ron right into the mix and started recording.”

The first Dark Angel album to feature Rinehart, Leave Scars upped the ante on Darkness Descends, featuring more complex rhythmic shifts and longer songs, while retaining the speed-thrash lacerations that pushed the band into the next level of extreme metal. Within the nightmarish firestorms lie welcome experimentations, such as the creepy “Worms,” the cinematic instrumental “Cauterization” and a wild take on Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” But while the album was full of strong material, the lo-fi production marred the overall sonic impact a bit.

“We were all used to hearing bad-sounding thrash records, and that’s okay when you’re first starting out, but when you’re on your third record you gotten step up the production, and that didn’t happen,” says Hoglan. We should have had a more cohesive sound happening and we take all the blame for the sound of Leave Scars. And that’s why we brought in Terry Date for our next album, Time Does Not Heal. We said, let’s just mitigate the issues and work with someone great. That way, we know it’s gonna sound killer.”

Dark Angel released Time Does Not Heal, in 1991, and along with the upgrade in production came a revised approach to songwriting. The band proved it could still lock it’s foot to the gas pedal on the title track, “Trauma and Catharsis” and “The New Preiesthood.” But “Pain’s Invention, Madness” and “Act of Contrition” are slower and more melodic, giving Rinehart more of a chance to belt out actual notes instead of just bark. Too busy with outside projects at the time of its release, Durkin sat out the album cycle, leaving Hoglan to tackle more rhythm guitar and almost all of the songwriting. He was joined by the new guitarist Brett Eriksen, who contributed to the songwriting, but ultimately left before the band finished touring.

“Time Does Not Heal was a different kind of album for us partially because Jim left, and we got Brett. Before, Jim and I each wrote about 50 percent of the songs, and now I’m suddenly doing 65 or 70 percent of the writing, which added more rhythm changes and complexity because I get bored easily. But also, I did not know how to self-edit songs back then, which is why they were so long.”

By the time the band finished touring for Time Does Not Heal speed-thrash was no longer the most extreme game in town, having been replaced by death metal. Fans who had latched onto Dark Angel because they were the bridge to the next heaviest thing, stepped off the bridge and embraced bands like Death, Morbid Angel, Deicide, and Napalm Death for an even more punishing aural assault than that of Dark Angel.

“Before death metal came along, thrash metal was the heaviest thing around,” Hoglan recalls. “Everyone was like, ‘Oh my God, this is so psychotic and heavy. Nothing’s gonna get heavier than this! Oh, wait…’ And all of a sudden you’ve got Morbid Angel, Death, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse — all these kick-ass death metal bands that definitely took the spotlight away from a lot of thrash bands.

“Kids went, ‘Hey, thrash metal is not so extreme anymore. Check out grindcore. Check out death metal!’ And all these thrash bands were kind of left in the dust. So Dark Angel kind of dissolved for a while, and I got into this more extreme death metal stuff. But I always knew speed wasn’t everything and that thrash would come back because everything happens in cycles. And if there’s one cool thing I heard straight from the horse’s mouths over the last 30-something years, it’s that Dark Angel had a major influence on all the death metal bands, the grindcore bands, and the black metal bands. And it feels good to know I played a role in all of that.”

As Hoglan says, music – especially metal – is a cyclical style of music, and about 20 years after the dawn of thrash, the old-school fans started turning their cousins, nephews, sons and daughters to the music and suddenly The Big Four were big business, Testament, Exodus and others were major tour attractions, and Dark Angel were back in demand. The band officially reformed in the 2010s and played select shows in 2014, 2015, 2018, and 2019.

Durkin took the stage with the band, and everyone had a blast playing influential speed-thrash songs for newcomers and old-school fans alike. But while Durkin was dedicated to the band, there was a point where he started dealing with personal issues and he made it clear that he would always be there in spirit, but there would be times he wouldn’t be able to perform. He handpicked Laura Christine (Warface, Meldrum, Nukem, Zimmer’s Hole) to fill in for him when the band returned to the road in 2022.

“I was not part of that decision one iota,” Hoglan says. “I found out later that back in 2018 when we played a show in Oakland, California at the California Death Fest. At the end of the night Jim took Laura aside. I was in an elevator going up to say goodnight to everybody and Jim steps in the elevator and announces to Laura, ‘Tonight was my last Dark Angel show, and I want you to be my replacement.’ Laura was looking at me, and then at him, and then she says, ‘Hey, I’m honored but did you guys talk about this?’ I said, ‘This is the first I’m hearing about any of this.’ And Jim goes, ‘Well, you’re my favorite guitarist and if I’m not gonna play any shows with the band, I want you to replace me.’ “As time went on, it wasn’t Jim’s last show with the band. He came back and played more shows. But for whatever reason, at that moment, right then and there, he had decided, this is it for me.  He later relented and Laura was great about it. She said, “This band should be with Jim Durkin. He’s the founding member.”

The rest of the band were aware Durkin had some health issues, but they didn’t seem incapacitating. It seemed like he just didn’t want to tour anymore, and the decision was made that, with his blessings, Laura would take his spot on the stage with the caveat that he could return at any time.

“We did a festival in April of 2023, in Texas called Hell’s Heroes. It was to be Laura’s first show with the band. As go-time rapidly approached, Laura rehearsed with Dark Angel, but she also reached out to Durkin to reiterate that he was Dark Angel’s lead guitarist, not her. “She reached out to him right before the gig, and said, ‘Jim, I just want you to know that I’m merely just stepping into your shoes for this gig. If you decide three days before the show that you want to jump in and play the show, that’s great. I’m all for it.’ And he explained to her, ‘Look, that’s not gonna happen.’”

At the time, Durkin was suffering from liver problems that were far more serious than anyone in the band knew. They were completely shocked and utterly unprepared when they found out he died from liver disease on March 8, 2023.

“We knew he had a couple of medical issues, but we didn’t expect him to be taken from us – any of us,” Hoglan says. “We knew Jim had something that was going to keep him from playing shows with us, but we did not know that it was something that was gonna take his life. We had no idea. That’s why it was so crushing to hear that our brother passed. Because even though he might not have been a part of the live portion of Dark Angel at that point, we were still writing together. He told me, ‘I might not be playing live with the band as much as I used to, but I still wanna write.’ And I was fine with that.”

Hoglan is pleased that the title track of Extinction Level Event isn’t just 100 percent Durkin, it’s completely unrelenting, bursting with speed, excitement, and Durkin’s knife-slash riffs. Beyond that, Hoglan insists that the rest of the songs on the album – which he and Christine composed before the full band contributed their input in the studio – are heavily inspired by Durkin’s spirit and performance style.

“Before the end of everything, I told Jim, ‘Yeah, let’s keep writing together,’” explains Hoglan. “It didn’t happen, and I ended up with just one full song from Jim. But Jim’s presence is felt all over the record because Jim’s songwriting was a really big influence for me. I had only played guitar for a couple years before I got into Dark Angel, and being around Jim day after day, year upon year, had a huge impact on my songwriting and I have Jim to thank for that.”

Having passed away two years ago, Durkin’s sudden death is still traumatic for Dark Angel and especially Hoglan. At the same time, he takes bittersweet pride in knowing that Jim’s playing and performances live on through him and Dark Angel, not only when the band plays his old riffs, but also in the continued influence Durkin has on the band’s new songs.

“One of the last things I told him was, “Jim, dude, you’re my original guitar hero,” Hoglan recalls. “My entire guitar style is based on your style because you are who I really learned how to play guitar from.” So, my guitar approach with Dark Angel is Jim Durkin’s approach. When I write for the band, I’m thinking, ‘What would Jim do here?’ That’s why his presence is massively all over this new record. Every single song. I wanted to make it to where people are like, “Yeah, Jim wrote that riff. Oh, there’s another Jim riff” because Jim wrote all the best riffs in the band, forever.”