Death Angel
Killing Season
Nuclear Blast
Still voracious after all these years
In retrospect, the best thing Death Angel might have ever done was starting out at such an early age. With the thrash classic The Ultra Violence coming out when the Bay Area band was still in their teens, by the time they returned to reunited in 2001 after a decade of inactivity, they were still in their early 30s. Much of that vigor of old was still present, the subsequent reunion album sounding like they hadn’t lost a step.
For all its exuberance, that last album still felt like Death Angel were feeling their way around, but on the long-awaited follow-up, the band has made significant improvements on all fronts. In fact, they prove that The Art of Dying was merely a warm-up; the streamlined ferocity of Killing Season has Death Angel playing with renewed life, exhibiting the level of mastery we expect from a Bay Area thrash legend. This isn’t just their best album in nearly two decades; they’ve simply never sounded better.
The band’s explosive thrash attack is still imposing on tracks like “Lord of Hate” and the blistering “The Noose,” aided tremendously by the robust production of Nick Raskulinecz, but the real strengths of the album lie in the more mid-tempo cuts. “Buried Alive” is a contagious, churning fist-pumper led by Mark Osegueda’s charismatic vocal delivery, while the dynamics of “Resurrection Machine” are executed so proficiently they make the current wave of thrash revivalists sound like rank amateurs in comparison. Who knows—maybe Trivium will sound this great in 15 years. —Adrien Begrand
