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Death Angel had released their sophomore album, “Frolic Through the Park”, in 1988. It in itself had provided a change of sorts from the music they had produced on their debut album, an album that mirrored what they had been playing in those Bay Area clubs in their formative years. In more recent years since, the band itself has been critical of the “Frolic Through the Park” album, calling it their bastard album, and playing almost none of the songs from it in their live sets since their reformation back in 2001. On the back of that album, Death Angel had toured around the world (or at least parts of it) for the first time, supporting bands such as Motörhead, Testament, Flotsam and Jetsam, Overkill and others, and were particularly popular in Japan where they sold out two Japanese tours on their own.
In 1989, Geffen Records bought out Death Angel’s contract with Enigma Records, a deal that not only showed great confidence in the band’s marketability but offered the band access to better and more experienced people in the studio. The offset to this was the potential for the band’s sound to be watered down a tad in the chase for commercial success for their new employer, especially in an age where the tide was turning from thrash to hair metal, and then the soon to arrive grunge phenomenon. Death Angel had already shown a penchant for rearranging their sound and incorporating other styles in their music between their first and second albums, so the possibility of more change into their third album was always a possibility.
Producer Max Norman, renown for working with such high-profile acts as Ozzy Osbourne, Megadeth, Savatage and Fates Warning among others, was brought in to oversee the production of the new album, one that again extended the reach of the band into places darker and deeper than they had been before, with their third album appropriately named “Act III”.
Straight out of the gates, the opening track “Seemingly Endless Time” succeeds in its task of making this an album you want to listen to from the very moment it begins. The waves of the ocean breaking on shore leads straight into the crushing opening riff and drum salvo, the break with Rob Cavestany’s guitar awesome lead lick into the opening proper and Mark Osegueda’s vocals hitting the tarmac, on song from the very beginning. The melodic guitars throughout the song lose nothing of their original thrash roots about them, indeed creating a perfect combination to pull together this track as one of the band’s all time greats. That opening salvo from Osegueda of “Drifting on an endless sea, on our way to nowhere, oblivious to our destiny, slowly drifting on and on and on...” is just perfect in power and emotion. “Stop” then crashes into the same formula set in motion by the rhythm riff from Brothers GUs and Dennis Pepa along with drummer Andy Galeon. The song sticks to its momentum throughout its five minutes in length, and then highlighted by the guitar solo break through to the end of the song which brings it home in style. It’s another ripping song.
“Veil of Deception” changes the pace of the opening two tracks of the album, mixing it up with the acoustically based track that is conceptually unique. It sounds like a song being played unplugged but not having been written for electric guitars in the first place. For most of it 2.5 minutes in length you expect it to break back into the power guitars and drums at any moment... only to find that isn’t the case. This gives it a unique sound for a thrash-based metal band and yet it doesn’t allow any energy to seep away from the album in doing so. Then comes the aggression of “The Organisation” to crash back in and get this party started once again. Motoring along at that uprising tempo, peppered with guitar licks and solos and great singalong vocals like “Organised to control, the power compels your soul, organised to control, fall to your knees and crawl” this is another terrific song. “Discontinued” follows on from this, and has a lot of similarities about it to another band that I recently reviewed on this podcast, that being Scatterbrain. Like a lot of Scatterbrain’s material, there is quite a fusion of funk into this song, musically and by proxy vocally. The main riff is perfectly complemented by the drumming of Galeon and the funk bass from Dennis Pepa. It may be an unusual step for this thrash band, but it is done particularly well and is really enjoyable as a result.
Along the way, there are two other songs that would need to be classed out of the solar system that is the heavy thrash genre, and they are the two acoustic based ballad-like songs. The first of these was “Veil of Deception”, which certainly had no ballad like components to its structure, unlike the next song. “A Room with a View” is the second of these featuring both Mark and Rob on lead vocals, Rob slightly fragile vocal renditions melding perfectly with Mark’s slightly more powerful and assured singing. It sits in a strange place in the track list of the album, and stands as a point of difference that many thrash bands were beginning to believe they needed to showcase to be attractive to as many fans as possible. “Stagnant” follows this, and is recognisable for its multiple time changes throughout the song, harping on a riff chord before suddenly changing gears and direction in the same instant and moving on, and then doing it again. Both of these songs highlight differences in the band’s output on this album than what had come before it.
“Ex-TC” climbs back into the Death Angel driving seat and builds back to the band’s early strengths of great fast picking thrash riffs combined with the band backing vocals to help out in the chorus, before Rob again unleashes on the solo section of the song to lift it to an even greater height. This moves with style into the next track “Disturbing the Peace”, a song that incorporates time changes again that “Stagnant” started. It’s not an unusual concept but it is one that Death Angel were new to, and when first coming into the album it is something that times to reconcile, going from flowing riffs to a stop start guitar method that then changes up the tempo. It is disconcerting to begin with, but becomes more routine the more you listen to the album. And get ready for a little more of the same when you reach the album closer “Falling Asleep”, though this one is far more traditional Death Angel, especially when the tempo picks up and remains in its ideal faster pace. It is the longest song on the album, and is full of great riffing from Gus Pepa and soling from Cavestany, while Mark’s vocals are just fantastic here to finish off the album.
There is a surprisingly large amount of disillusionment for this album out there on the public album review sites like Encyclopedia Metallum and Rate Your Music. And that ranges from the fact that these people seem to want more thrash from the band such as their debut album, or simply a heavier sound like they produced on their albums following their reformation in 2001. Change can bring that about, and that is something that “Act III” does provide.
The conflict that comes in the aforementioned reviews on public sites about this album is something that I was oblivious to prior to the internet allowing such things to exist. And quite simply for me, that was because “Act III” was my introduction to the band. My future Vinyl Procurement Officer was the first one to offer me a glimpse of this album, suggesting at the time that ‘these guys are sick!!’, which I forgave him for because he was five years younger than my age of 20 at that particular time. And all it took was the first 30 seconds of the opening track “Seemingly Endless Time” to suck me in. So for me, my ‘in’ for Death Angel came with what in the future was seen as a dividing album. That is still something I don’t profess to understand. Of course, when I went back and finally got to listen to the band’s first two albums, I heard the differences in song composition that they hold, but it didn’t make me like them any more than this album, nor indeed love this album any less.
As I do, I have had this album on for the last week. At work it passes by as background noise a lot of the time, but at home on my stereo in the metal cavern, it has been as spectacular as it was when I first heard it 35 years ago. And just saying that length of time in regard to this album makes me feel a little uneasy. Surely I can’t be that old. Because when I put this on again, I was transported back to that first time I put Holzy’s borrowed CD copy on my first EVER stereo in my downstairs bedroom at Mum and Dad’s house in Kiama Downs, and heard this blast out of the speakers at me. It was like I was back there again, 20 years old and with my whole wretched wasted life still ahead of me. At least I don’t have to relive that, but I can relive this album, and I have done so many times in the past week.
So I tried to be picky, to find what people don’t like about this album. To be fair, if you are comparing it to the production and song ferociousness of the albums they have released SINCE this album, then that’s a different story, because it would be 14 years between this album and their next, “The Art of Dying”, and the metal world had changed a LOT between them. I get some blowback on “A Room with a View” because I have some reservations about it too, especially that it was obviously written to be a single and to try and draw in listeners to the album and make their new record company lots of free money. But no other song compares to it, so anyone who bought the album on the basis of that single is an idiot. And “Veil of Deception” is a great song, a heavy acoustic song without trying to be heavy. It showed the band could diversify, as did the funkiness of “Discontinued” and the tempo changes in “Stagnant”. There is no argument that this isn’t a pure thrash metal album, but come 1990, how many of those were there left from any of the great thrash metal bands?! Bands like Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax released groundbreaking and awesomely brilliant albums in 1990, but none of them could truly be categorised as a pure thrash album. They were matured and mixed with styles that had them classed as a hybrid, but not a pure bred. So too, “Act III” should be classed in the same way.
This remains my favourite Death Angel album, my original and best. And that takes nothing away from all of their albums. This just motorises my memories every time I put it on.
What DID hurt was the dissolution of the band after this album, after the near fatal bus crash that put drummer Andy Galeon in a 12 month recovery and forced the band off the road and into other phases of their life. Wonderfully for fans, they did indeed eventually come back together, and six further albums have come as a result. And hopefully, with more to come.
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