[Interview conducted April 2004]

The boundless energy that defined the thrash metal movement of the 80s was perhaps most evident in the Bay Area's most vibrant and innovative act, the Filipino five-piece known as Death Angel.   This is a band that is just at ease letting loose with a fast thrasher one moment and a somber acoustic number the next.  After a decade absence from the scene, the band reunited (minus original guitarist Gus Pepa) for the Thrash of the Titans show in 2001, a benefit for Testament's Chuck Billy and his cancer treatment.  That went so well, they quickly booked several local and European shows and proceeded to record a new album, The Art of Dying, which effortlessly combines everything the band has done before and incorporates several new elements as well.  Bassist Dennis Pepa brings us up to date with unique outfit…

You've always had slightly unusual album titles - how did The Art of Dying come about?
It actually came up from Andy watching a Bruce Lee video, a documentary on TV.  I think it was part of an old Bruce Lee proverb and Andy just brought it to us one day and it was definitely on the list on the wall of what album title we were going to use.  After analyzing everything to death (laughs), we thought that would make total sense to put that on the album.

Do you have a deeper meaning that you've ascribed to it?
Some people look at it and are like, 'Well, you guys are coming back, shouldn't it be The Art of Living?'  But if you look at it one way, yeah, but then the way we look at the title, it is the art of dying - not the art of death, it's what you do before you die, you actually live your life.  So it's kind of a rebirth title, it's got a twist to it.  We didn't want to make it that simple.

The production has a pretty raw feel to it - were you setting out to avoid getting too polished a sound on this one?
Definitely.  Out of all the Death Angel albums, we try to do that for each one of them, because we've always liked the live feel and we feel we are more of a live band than a studio band.  Brian Dobbs somehow captured it this time - he just turned the right knob and used the right mics and our chemistries just gelled as far as what the goal was.  To me, it's our best production just because he did capture that live feel with a clarity - I mean, you can hear every single instrument on there.  Again, we were trying to do stay away from what everybody else is doing, as far as production nowadays.  The whole Death Angel, just use somebody not too many people are using, take a different path.

Can you describe the general songwriting process in Death Angel?  Is it any different from the early days?
I think it has actually changed to where more of us are contributing a lot more to each song and there's definitely more input throughout the band.  Rob is still the total main writer of the band, he probably wrote I'd say 75% of the music, but we definitely all have say in it now.  It's cool because we don't take just one formula and write that way.  Sometimes, somebody will come to practice with a whole song written, sometimes we'll all write a song in one go, and sometimes we'll give each other a riff and somebody will add to it.  Each song was written differently, there's not really one formula to it.  I think the break we had was really good as far as our musicianship and respecting what each other does.

The arrangements on all of your songs seem very meticulous, very well planned out.  Is that stuff all nailed down before you enter the studio?
Yeah, pretty much.  We try to nail that down during pre-production, just demoing and demoing a song.  Nowadays, you can do that in your own studio because technology.  Rearranging songs and playing with how things fall after each thing.  I think that is definitely one of our strong points as far as writing.
 

I know you did some touring before you recorded this album - did you get a chance to try out any of these songs live before you recorded them?
We started playing "Prophecy" and "Five Steps of Freedom" during the earlier legs of the last tours, just because those were the two newest songs to us so we just started playing them live.  We just wanted to see what the response would be and it was pretty cool, people really embraced them.  Aside from that, we didn't really play any of the other songs, we kind of wanted to keep it hidden.

I read something about re-issues coming out on Rykodisc.
What's happening is The Ultra-Violence is being remastered and the bonus tracks on that are the Kill As One demo, produced by Kirk [Hammett], and that's also remastered.  Frolic is getting remastered and three unreleased Death Angels songs are on that, from that era, and a third CD is coming out that is called Rarities.  It's twelve songs that Death Angel never released.  Some of them are demo versions, some are studio versions, some of them are live garage tapes, but it's going to add up to a new album for us.  It was all recorded in the 80s and it's all songs that were never on any of the three albums.  It's more of a hardcore fan CD versus somebody who wants to pick up a Death Angel album, because it's older stuff and not the greatest produced stuff, but it's songs that we've never released and quite a few people out there know some of these songs from back in the day.  They asked us why we never released them, so now is the chance to go out and buy it.  All three CDs will also come in a box set which will include a DVD which has old interviews with us and I think our older videos, from the first two albums.  As far as Act III goes, nothing is really moving on it yet.  I think what's going to happen is I think Geffen has it right now and they're going to hold onto it until the new album launches and they see what the numbers are.  I'm crossing my fingers, I hope they reissue it.

Do you think you'll ever have a proper live album released someday?
It's one of those things where we just need to be in the right place of this new career of ours.  We don't want to rush into it and do a half-assed job, we definitely want to plan it out and do it right.  We actually want to do a DVD version of it, too, so we'll probably release the live album as well as the DVD and the DVD will probably have more of the whole concert versus the album.  We're hoping to do that within the next two years.

When the band split back in the early 90s, was that a difficult decision to make or was it pretty obvious by that point that something needed to change?
Yes and no.  With all the shit we were going through, it wasn't too hard and we just wanted to walk away from it.  But then again, there was all the work that we did as well, so it was both.  I think it was actually easier than not because we wanted it to end and move on.  That's why right after that we started The Organization.

When you reformed for the Thrash of the Titans show, was it thought to be just a one-off thing?
Definitely, the whole thing was for Chuck and his cause and we only rehearsed two days before that because we thought it was just going to be a one-off   From the audience feedback and people telling us we stole the show and just the way it made us feel on stage, a few months later we re-established the band and announced it officially.

Do you get a lot of younger fans coming to the shows?
We're starting to.  I mean we definitely want to hit the younger audience, that's always the prime market, but we want to do it with the right bands.  We don't want to go out with any of these commercial nu-metal bands - we want to keep it at a level where it is respectable to us, too.  About four months ago we played a show with The Deftones in Sacramento and the kids went crazy and their whole audience is like 12 to late 20s.  I walked around after our set and all these kids were amazed, they didn't know who we were, they had never seen anything like us.  We pretty much sold out of our merchandise and the Deftones guys were like, 'Man, nobody ever sells merch like that!' (laughs)  I definitely think we have a niche in that market, we just need to be exposed to it.  I think if we did like the Vans Warped tour, that would be perfect.

You guys did a video recently?
Yeah, for "Thicker Than Blood."  It turned out really good.  We filmed it in an abandoned train station in Oakland.  Hopefully you'll see it on MTV.

Death Angel has always drawn on more than just thrash metal, but what are your thoughts on the genre and its resurgence in recent years?
To be honest, until we got back together three years ago, I really didn't pay attention to it.  Like I said, I listen to punk rock and that's really my scene.  I would now and then go see a metal band, but until we got back together, I didn't really know what was going on in the whole metal scene.  I just knew that these bands were commercial sounding and they were on the radio and was kind of disgusted by it.  Everybody was tuning down and playing three chords, everybody wanted to be crossover rap kinda metal thing.  It lasted for over ten years but I think it's starting to crumble now, it just seems like so many people are tired of it that nu-metal is just like old-metal or used-metal, whatever you want to call it - it's just not hip anymore.  I think thrash metal is definitely on an upswing and has the potential to be really huge this time.

[for the rest of this interview, check out issue #27 of Outburn Magazine]

 http://www.deathangel.com