DEATH ANGEL
Killing Season
(Nuclear Blast)

IMPALED
The Last gasp
(Willowtip)

THE HEX DISPENSERS
S/T
(Alien Snatch)

BLUNDERBUSS
S/T
(Escape Artist)

SAVIOURS
Into Abaddon
(Kemado)

WAR FROM A HARLOTS
MOUTH
Transmetropolitan 

(Lifeforce)

SYNAESTHESIA
The Requiem Reveries

(Vendlum)

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In their heyday and not, California’s Death Angel was my favorite thrash metal band. Yes, in my book they were way above any other thrash band, Metallica included.  And now, with their second album after their return to the metal scene with 2004’s confident The Art of Dying, they are comfortably positioning themselves back ahead of the current pack of veteran thrash purveyors and even the new crop of old school revivalists.  So yeah, the San Francisco Filipino cousins are back and they are packing like the Colombian militia men. And I am saying ‘comfortably’, because Killing Season is perhaps Death Angel’s best since Act III, which of course, is the last real full-length the band ever produced. 

Though opinions may diverge, to my ears Act III was their best  work as it exploited the almost prodigious musicality of drummer Andy Galeon and the inspiring melodic guitars of Rob Cavestany and explored the type of territory that not many thrashers were willing to explore; namely a little bit of funk. In other words, the band did not exactly go soft, Death Angel was distancing itself a bit from the classic and brutal speed of their breakthrough debut The Ultra-Violence and the expansive thrash of Frolic Through the Park.  So, if you actually prefer the band’s debut or the sophomore effort as your favorite it does not matter, I have news for you; Killing Season easily rivals them all. This is not a return to form, is much more than that.

Madafacas are on fire over here, presenting incendiary song after incendiary song of some high grained and purely refined thrash metal. Checking any cut here; from “Sonic Beatdown” to “Buried Alive”, to “The Noose” to “God vs God”; it’s clear that the thrash of Death Angel is not the same thrash metal all these revivalists are playing. Unlike most of those, Death Angel are by now seasoned veterans with a real career, success, failure and disappointment on their backs and the experience and talent shows in the way the creativity of the vastly underrated Rob Cavestany expresses itself through riffs that cast a looming shade over the current scene. 

What makes Killing Season most pure is that it sounds like the organic evolution of a band without the forced inclusion of diverging genres like the little funk of Act III or the synthetic technical prog rock that many death/thrash combos would explore two or three albums deep back in the 90’s. Killing Season is hard but is not necessarily brutal, nor filled with staccato riffs; it’s hardened and aged rock music. It blasts like few others and thrashes by its power, but few thrash bands are capable of cramming this much quality into one record.  Here Death Angel rewrites its history through flashy solos that reinforce the riffs, the substantial and flavorful drumming of Galeon and basically set the natural vocals of Mark Osegueda in quotes. This is it, if all comebacks were this strong, we wouldn’t argue about their validity.

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