INTERVIEW: Dark Angel is ready for an ‘Extinction Level Event’
Dark Angel, the legendary thrash metal band, is back with a new album called Extinction Level Event, which will be released later this year. To whet the palates of eager fans, the group recently released the title track and “Circular Firing Squad” as singles, and the songs have metal devotees buzzing about the return of this dynamite band with a long history of thrashing.
Carrying on the Dark Angel legacy is drummer Gene Hoglan. He is a musician with an impressive pedigree, having played with the likes of Testament, Dethklok, Strapping Young Lad, Fear Factory and Death to All, a Death tribute band, according to press notes. But his first love was this band that began back in the 1980s. There have been many lineup changes throughout the years and a couple of hiatuses when everyone went their separate ways.
Today’s lineup of Dark Angel consists of Hoglan, Eric Meyer on guitars, Ron Rinehart on vocals, Mike Gonzalez on bass and Laurie Christine on guitars. They carry on in honor of the legacy of Jim Durkin, the original guitarist of Dark Angel who died in 2023.
Hoglan said he has been happy with the critical and fan response to the first single and cannot wait for listeners to enjoy the full album. “Everybody who has reached out to me has been like, ‘Dude, the new tune is blowing me away. I love it. Sounds awesome. The artwork is killer. We love that, too,'” Hoglan said in a recent phone interview. “So I am getting tons of positive feedback so far, and it’s pretty exciting. And we’ve got a whole bunch more incredible tunes coming everybody’s way, so I’m excited about everything, absolutely.”
Hoglan called the new album savage, ripping, aggressive, forceful and monumental, and he feels strongly that everyone will appreciate what Dark Angel has accomplished. The band has not released an album of original material since 1991’s Time Does Not Heal, so this is a long time in the making.
“I’m really excited about Dark Angel’s return,” the drummer said. “We just tried to write a really kickass metal record. We tried to throw out any kind of preconceived notions. Of course, when I said, ‘Hey, we’re writing a new record,’ everybody was asking, ‘Hey, is it going to be like Darkness Descends? Is it going to be like Time Does Not Heal or Leave Scars or any one of your other records?’ That was kind of a head-scratcher to me because I’m like, ‘Well, we’ve never repeated an album.'”
Hoglan added: “I’m really just trying to focus on what would Dark Angel write currently. Say we never went away, say we were always putting out records, where would Dark Angel be at right now? So instead of going back to demo tapes that were like 30 years old — because we had another album, musically anyway, ready to go after Time Does Not Heal, and when went on hiatus or dissolved or whatever that was, I still had these songs — instead of going back to those and making it very easy, like, hey, here’s what Dark Angel sounded like in 1992, no, let’s just write what we would write now. I’m more excited about my writing chops and all of our chops now than back then. Let’s keep it current to what Dark Angel would sound like in 2024-2025. Let’s move forward in that regard. That’s where this album is super-duper exciting. It’s not like, well, some of these riffs I know they were pretty cool back in 1991-92, but are they going to hold up now? No, all these riffs are brand new, so killer.”
The album has been in the works for more than a decade, and Hoglan actually leaked news of its creation to the press many yers ago, back when Durkin was still alive and in the band. Durkin and Hoglan were starting to get together and write some songs. One of those tunes was “Extinction Level Event,” and Hoglan was so excited that he let slip that a new album was forthcoming.
“I blurted out immediately [to the press], ‘Oh yeah, we’re writing. We’re going to have a new album out really soon. It’s coming,’ and then it took another decade because I’m just so involved in all of my other career, all the bands that I was playing with,” he said. “And so really when it got to the point where it’s like, hey, I’ve got some time available — this was during the pandemic really — the songs started coming in a very creative burst. Before you know it, there were 10 songs, 11 songs ready to go.”
Sadly, during that in-between time, the music world lost Durkin, but Hoglan said his presence is still featured on the album. They had started the album with him, and they were determined to finish the project in his memory. That’s when Christine, the newest member of the band and Hoglan’s wife, became a permanent fixture of Dark Angel.
“[Durkin] was my first guitar hero,” the drummer said. “I learned how to play guitar really by playing it with Jim when I was a teenager and writing the Darkness Descends album together and the Leave Scars album and things like that. A lot of Jim’s style is all over this album. He has songs on there. He has a number of riffs on this album, but the riffs that he has influenced, that I’m writing for instance, they are very influenced by Jim Durkin and his memory because he was a fantastic riff writer himself, great guitarist. So that’s one way his legacy is going to live on just by his influence and impact on the writing style of Dark Angel. He set the template back in the day, and I try to follow that template, write some kickass, catchy riffs that are pretty cool, sound cool, look cool. If I’m kind of getting the Jim Durkin thumbs-up seal of approval, then that’s really good for me, so that’s how we move forward, indeed.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Dark Angel’s new album is called Extinction Level Event, which will be released later in 2025. The title track and “Circular Firing Squad” are now available as singles from Reversed Records. Click here for more information.
