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Metal Mania article

[pg 13]

Death Angel: Exclusive in the studio! And now Act III!!!

By Heidi Paulsen

One of my favorite bands is Death Angel, and one of my favorite albums to come out last year was their second album, Frolic Through The Park. I was very impressed with the diversity of the record, and thought the whole world would be, too. But to my surprise and dismay, the majority of the whole world never even heard of Death Angel.

From what I gather, there were some problems between the band and their former management and former label. Since then, Death Angel has signed with the almighty Geffen Records, and a new management company; which should make them a household word in no time. Although all of their problems are not settled yet, I trust that 1990 will be Death Angel’s year.

I caught up with them in an LA studio where they are working on their third album, entitled Act III, which is tentatively schedule for a January 1990 release. I spoke with guitarist Rob Cavestany and drummer Andy Galeon, both of who I found to be very intelligent and extremely world-weary for their respective 21 and 17 years.

Although they were still strictly forbidden to discuss anything concerning their former label and management, they did speak to me in general terms about beginning a career in music at such a young age.

“We go back to the pots and pans situation,” says Rob. “Before Andy had a drum set even. Just acoustic guitar and some pots and pans. Dennis (Pepa) started singing and then Gus (Pepa) started playing guitar. We couldn’t find a bass player so Den started playing bass. We were playing songs like “Thrashers” and “Devil’s Metal” back then. So we were a four-piece. Our first show was like the end of 1983.

“Later Mark would come out and do a couple of songs, and people would be like ‘What the fuck is this?’ All of a sudden some guy would come out and really sing. And then we started gigging and it just came together like that. We were playing gigs and we hooked up with management.” By 1987, they had released their first album, The Ultra-Violence.

I asked why their albums may not have done as well as expected, to which Rob had this to say: “It wasn’t our fault. We always just do as best as we can. A lot of the things that happened to us…well, put it this way: it was out of our hands. It was nothing that we could do anything about.

“As for other people, if you have a band, and you’re just starting off, just be careful of what you do. You could be doing your best, doing whatever you can; but unfortunately, the whole game does not rely just upon what you do. It relies upon other people and coordination with other people. Sometimes those people are not up to what they’re supposed to be.”

“Whatever you do, always watch out,” adds Andy. “Be on the offensive. Know what’s happening; because even though you may not want to trip off of all the business side of it, it’s always there. Even from when you first start. The beginning is the most crucial part. It’s what sets out your destiny.”

Lesson here: “Don’t take candy from strangers.”

Because of its diverse, not strictly thrash sound, a lot of people who loved Death Angel’s first album, were disappointed with Frolic Through The Park. Personally, I was impressed with the style and progression on the second album, but I think there are a lot of thrash fans out there who didn’t understand. I wondered what their response to the charge of their slowing down and selling out might be.

“Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, right?” Rob remarks. “I’m sorry that some people got let down or something. But if they’re just totally into Thrash, and they don’t like some of the stuff we’re doing, for whatever reason it may be that they’re only allowed to like Thrash—because their other friends only like thrash, or I don’t even know what. If that’s the way they feel about, then so be it. They don’t have to listen to it, right?

“But if you like it, then that’s cool, too. We don’t play something just for the sake of being thrash. Just like it would be selling out to play some wimpy kind of music just to get on the radio; it would be selling out to just play the fastest thing we could play just for the sake of being thrash.”

According to Andy: “We don’t wanna be bound by any name, or stuck in any category. That’s why we have a hard time when people ask us what kind of music we think we are now. We don’t know. The first album was total thrash, and the second one had so many more influences. We’ve grown musically and the new album sums it all up.”

Rob had this to add: “The Ultra Violence was a first taste of what music we could put out. That’s what we were into at that time; when Thrash was ‘it.’ Then Frolic is where we started to find ourselves musically and realize we’re better than we thought. We can expand. It wasn’t just like we can only play fast. Because when you only play fast, and then you try to play something slow, you find that it’s much harder than you thought. You may think that it’s easier to play slow. But to actually get tight and in the groove, that’s a totally different trip. On our second album, we started to check it out and see what we like to play. We started finding ourselves musically; because on the first album we only had limited influences, and limited knowledge of music, and limited everything. As time goes by, you start to experiment and you play better.”

“We had a short time to write for the new album,” says Andy. “You put out an album, and then you go on the road, and then you have to put the next album out. So all the ideas are fresh and different.”

I wondered what they listen to, what’s influenced them lately.

“Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fish Bone, Jane’s Addiction, Faith No More,” replies Andy. “For me, anything that’s on the radio, anything that’s on MTV. Rap, Soul, Funk, Hip Hop, Thrash, Hardcore, Speedcore, Elton John.”

“I listen to Elton John all the time,” adds Rob. “We’ve also been listening [pg 14] to Metallica again lately. You’ll be surprised when you hear this new album. It’s way full of surprises. It’s deep. A lot of the shit that we can’t really talk about is the inspiration for a lot of what the album is about.

“We go through a lot of shit all the time. This is our only outlet to let everyone know, but not really KNOW a lot of the stuff that we’ve felt in the recent past. Some people know what we’ve been through, some don’t. This ties it all together. You’ll understand when you read the lyrics and you find out the meanings of the songs. It’ll hit you. They’re not real cheerful. They’re deep.”

The album will contain nine original songs (two of which, I’ve been informed, are acoustic!). The CD will contain a bonus track called “Betrayed,” which “totally speaks for itself.”

R: “That’s the story of our lives right now.”

H: “Which you guys can’t talk about.”

A: “Only in a song.”

First is, “Seemingly Endless Time,” a song about “these people that are on a ship out at sea. Their course is set, but due to circumstances beyond their control, they get blown off course. So they’re lost at sea, and they’re to get to land as hard as they can. But everything around them is preventing them from doing this. They are thrown into a void. And it seems as if they are on a seemingly endless time.”

Sounds to me like the perfect metaphor for what the Death Angel boy shave been through. But being that they can’t actually talk about that stuff, and since that stuff is not intrinsic to their music anyway, I’ll take Andy’s word when he says that, “it can relate to anything. You’re driving in your car and you get lost. You don’t know where you’re going, and everything goes wrong. It just seems like it’s an endless time.”

And then there’s “Stop,” which vocalist Mark Osegueda wrote. “Nobody knows what it’s about but him,” says Rob. “Kind of like ‘Why You Do This’” (from Frolic Through the Park).

Mark also wrote the next cut, “Ecstasy.” The song is about being extremely enraptured, the feeling of ecstasy. “It’s a song about feeling good,” and it’s based on an experience that Mark had. Sounds to me like it’s either about sex or drugs (Mark denies that it’s about drugs…hmmmmmmmm.)

And then there’s “Veil of Deception.” According to Rob, “That one that doesn’t have any double meaning. It’s just straight up. It tells the story of any old woman, one you would picture wearing black all the time. She’s lived her whole life being cold that way. But it isn’t her fault. It’s because of things that happened to her when she was really young. That’s why now she has this veil of deception. Why she’s so cold now.”

The fifth song is one called “Discontinued,” which Andy wrote. “It’s sort of like a struggle or a fight. All the different feelings and stuff that you go through in life, and how you try to deal with them. Sometimes you end up empty handed; and sometimes it works out. But you’ve gotta keep trying. You’ve gotta keep going. It’s about overcoming and discontinuing all the bullshit.” All of this out of the mouth of a seventeen-year-old.

Next up is “Room With A View,” which Rob wrote. “It’s the slow song on the album. The reason I wrote it is because most slow songs are about chicks. This is about a blind man. It’s about how he can see without his sight. His other senses have become acute. Stevie Wonder was the inspiration for this song. He ‘sees’ music. If anyone can see music, it would be a blind person. Music would mean so much more to you.”

Don’t expect “Room With A View” to be Death Angel’s first single. They don’t plan on going the route of “metal” bands who put out a ballad to get air play. “If we put it out, it’ll be much later on.”

“Disturbing the Peace,” a song about the Hayward Riot in San Francisco is the seventh song on the album.

“We played this show with six or seven other bands,” says Rob. “We were headlining. Right before we came on, the people organizing the whole thing (it was anniversary/festival kind of thing) just freaked out. People weren’t getting out of hand or anything. There were a few fights. Just the usual. But it was a really plush place. And then they panicked, so they called up the police; which caused a riot. Everything would have been fine, but they stopped us after the first song. So, of course, people freaked out. They had come to see us, and they weren’t gonna let us play, so everyone went crazy. The police were hitting people, causing fights.

“What happened was that it was the same day as the Berkley Riot, and they saw people moshing and driving, and losing control; and it scared them. They didn’t know that it was nothing out of the ordinary. But when they called in the police, they actually started the trouble.

“When people get out of hand at a football game or something like that, it’s okay. They authority figure think ‘that’s okay, they look like me.’ So what happens is that music, heavy metal especially become a scapegoat. Blame it on the freaks.”

There there’s a song called “Stagnant,” which basically speaks for itself. “It’s about never moving, never changing: forever moving, forever changing.”

Song number eight is one called “The Organization,” which Andy describes as “sort of surrealistic.”

“It’s not about one thing. It’s derived from when we were in Germany, and ‘The Organization’ took care of us. They gave us everything. Everything was free. It was really spooky. The place that we were staying at had this really eerie vibe to it. We were totally tripping on it because it was really weird.

“We didn’t even know what The Organization was. We would order dinner, and then we’d go to pay for it, and they would say ‘The Organization is taking care of it.’ We went and got hella…and I mean HELLA drinks, and they were like, ‘You still have more on the tab. The Organization is taking care of it.’ And we were like: ‘Organization! Who is this Organization?’

“But the song is about something else. About a girl who gets mentally tortured. Double meaning there.”

Last (if you have the CD, ‘Betrayed’ comes second to last) is ‘Falling Asleep.’ As Rob relates, “I was in traffic school. You know, from when you get a ticket, and you have to go to school for six hours. I was falling asleep, and the dude was getting [pg 15] mad because you’re not supposed to. So instead of falling asleep, I wrote a song about it.

“But then it ends up being deeper than that, because it’s actually about losing it, and not keeping in touch with reality. You don’t wanna just fade out…so that’s what the song is about. But you’ve gotta read the lyrics, because it’s deeper than that.”

I cannot wait to hear this album. Hopefully, it won’t be delayed anymore. Since they’re actually in the studio recording it now, I would think that it will be on schedule.

“I told a lot of people that the album would come out in 1989…but…I lied,” confesses Andy. “But I didn’t mean to lie. It was due to circumstances beyond our control.”

The producer is Max Norman, who did several of Ozzy’s earlier albums (“the good ones”, the Loudness records and Dangerous Toys, to name a few.

“We chose him because he’d let us have a lot of input. We needed to have our say because we’re not one of those bands who just give our stuff to someone else to do,” says Andy. “Because we knew what we wanted to hear, we knew how we wanted it to sound.”

“We talked to him and stuff,” adds Rob. “We actually hung out with him a bit before we decided.”

Knowing, from the sound of their descriptions, that his album is destined to be a huge success, I wondered just how far the boys wanted to go. Wouldn’t it bug them to not be able to walk down the strip without being recognized and bothered.

“I don’t think we even picture how big we’ll get in terms of whether or not we can walk down the street without getting noticed,” says Rob. “I think of how far we can get in terms of our music reaching as many people as it can.”

“As you know, all of our albums are thought out. It’s more focusing on the musical side of it and growing in that respect,” Andy adds. “It’s not status. David Gilmour could walk down the street without being recognized. And that’s what the whole Pink Floyd thing is the. The mystery behind them not being on their album covers or anything. They have a whole visual, trippy concept backing them up. Of course, in the whole business of Rock or Thrash, you always have to be known. Your picture in the public eye. But we rely on music, and the live stage show. We’re most concerned with that, than just being famous.”

“We want our music to take us there,” Rob says. “Of course we want to get as far as we can. It’s not like we’d say, ‘Well, we wanna get this big; and that’s as big as we wanna get.’ You might think of it in terms of no boundaries. Obviously, if you’re even doing this, you’re striving for the most you can possibly get out of it; but the music comes first.

“With us it’s not even the trip of the privacy. It’s more that you have to sacrifice your own personal time as to what you would be doing instead, because everyone has their own personal interests in this band. We have our own friends, and people we’re close to. But a lot of that gets sacrificed. Because you have to put so much time and effort into working on the project. You just have to hope that it’ll be worth it in the end. In a way, I miss out on a lot of different cool things.

“We’ve been doing this for about seven years, right? Which for Andy is since he was about eleven years old; and for me, since I was thirteen or fourteen. Kids do a lot of things in that age period, like with your friends. Lots of stuff we miss, because we’re not always around our friends. We’re busy with being a band. We practice every day. We’ve been on a couple of tours. And then you go away to record an album, and when you come back your friends have change. But you haven’t been a part of it.”

“As time goes on, everything changes, and you can never relive what time has done,” Andy reflects.

“I think it’s good that we’re close to a lot of people and have a lot of close friends,” Rob relates, “because when you go on tour for a while, you start missing everyone. But that gives you some sense of reality as a person. Our whole clique, our group of friends that we hang around, have been around way beyond The Ultra-Violence we’ve been around them since way back when. Like, our roadie who’s in the studio right now, saw our first show at The Stone. He was sitting at the front of the stage watching us.

“I could picture that once you hit a point when you don’t care about friends and all that, that’s when you turn into a Rock-god monster, who doesn’t care about the music, and doesn’t mind selling out. That’s how I picture that these people think, the people who think they’re all hot. They just don’t give a fuck. They’re just going with it, living the rock star image. I hope our band demises before that ever happens to any of us. I’d hope that we’d just fucking fall apart before we ever got plastic.”

I think there’s small chance of that ever happening. For young people, they’ve got some good heads on their shoulders. Shit, they’re more together than most of their older counterparts. Somebody gave them a good solid base to start from. They’re responsible, they actually think about the effect they may have on young kids.

“We’re not trying to put out a message or anything,” Rob tells me. “But our responsibility is to ourselves. If someone goes nuts because of what we have created, they are responsible for themselves. It’s true though, that younger kids are influenced by it, and it would suck if you were some kid’s hero, and he went out and did something stupid on account of you. And you think, ‘Well, it ain’t my fault. I didn’t tell him to do that.’ But in reality, it was sort of due to you. Having the knowledge that kids might do that, you might as well watch what you’re doing. You’ve gotta open your eyes and realize that if you do say shit that might influence someone in doing something stupid, you do ultimately have some responsibility.” End.

#Death Angel #solnu scans #this sounds like it's sometime in late 1989

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