DARK ANGEL 

Ron Rinehart – vocals 

Eric Meyer – guitar, backing vocals 

Laura Chris;ne – guitar, backing vocals 

Mike Gonzalez – bass, backing vocals 

Gene Hoglan – drums, guitar, bass, backing vocals 

There was a ;me in the mid-‘80s when “thrash” was the fastest, heaviest, most extreme form of metal.  That said, a handful of bands thrashed a liKle harder and with more feral abandon than their peers.  Those chosen few inadvertently led the genre towards an even more brutal style of music that gained  underground acceptance a few years later – death metal.  

Before that cri;cal point in ;me, however, ultra-thrash band Dark Angel stood on the precipice of  devasta;on and innova;on. Too fast and noisy for some, jawdropping and groundbreaking for others,  Dark Angel led a prickly, poisonous path beyond the evil riffs and whirlwind rhythms pioneered by Slayer.  And Dark Angel drummer and songwriter Gene Hoglan was right there at the center of the storm (even  coaching Slayer’s Dave Lombardo how to play double-bass beats for the breakthrough EP Haun%ng the  Chapel). 

Forty years, and mul;ple seismic shakeups later, Dark Angel have returned with the spine-shaKering Ex%nc%on Level Event, their first album of original material since 1991’s colossal Time Does Not Heal. “Musically, lyrically, and vocally, I’m so stoked about this album,” says Hoglan, the veteran drummer-of all-trades and ;meclock behind almost too many influen;al metal groups to count – Testament,  Dethklok, Strapping Young Lad, Fear Factory, and Death graduate tribute band, Death To All. “I’m really  excited about Dark Angel right now, and everyone who’s heard the new album is losing their minds. Every ;me I’d finish a song and send it over to the guys, everybody was, ‘Gene, this is my favorite song!’  ‘No, this is my favorite song!!’ ‘Dude, this is totally my favorite song!!!” That’s never a bad sign.” 

Ex%nc%on Level Event features new guitarist Laura Chris;ne, and a new level of produc;on, thanks to the  advancements in technology since the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Yet, the album follows the twisted  barbed-wire path and innova;ve approach of fan favorites, Darkness Descends and Leave Scars, which  remained landmark extreme thrash records decades aaer their release. That’s hardly a surprise since the  majority of the lineup for the album is the same as on the aforemen;oned releases. 

The ;tle track of “Ex;nc;on Level Event” was wriKen by guitarist Jim Durkin, a decade ago, long before  he suffered from severe liver disease, and, to the surprise of everyone, passed away in 2023. “Jim Durkin  lea us with this badass tune,” Hoglan says. “It is so Dark Angel and I’m just so excited about it. We made  it the lead-off song on the record, not as a tribute to Jim or because of sen;mental reasons – like, here is  the song that Jim lea us – but because it’s just a totally killer song. He wrote it ten years ago, and by  today’s standards it’s s;ll ball-crushing.” 

Fast and aggressive, “Ex;nc;on Level Event” is as fierce and infec;ous as Dark Angel’s best songs and  features the band’s heralded bombas;c riffs and vocal structures. Hoglan and guitarist Laura Chris;ne  wrote everything else on Ex%nc%on Level Event, each song rivalling the ferocity and musicality of the ;tle  track; Chris;ne co-wrote five songs, and her wri;ng style rubbed off on Hoglan. “Atavis;c,” for example,

is a full-on three-minute thrash metal barrage. “It’s primi;ve, it’s raw, and it takes you right back to the  days of super-aggressive thrash metal,” Hoglan says. 

Other songs are a liKle slower, but no less incendiary. “Woke Up to Blood” is a tangled rollercoaster of  jagged riffs and syncopated beats, the ;tle of which stemmed from a dog aKack. “[Guitarist] Eric Meyer  came in with a big, nasty cut on his arm,” Hoglan says. “We asked him, ‘Eric, what happened?’ and he  told us about how his wife’s dog aKacked him in the middle of the night. He said, ‘Dude, I was lying in  bed asleep and then I was just bleeding profusely. I woke up to blood.’ And I went, ‘Hey, wait a minute. I  goKa write that down in the ‘notes’ sec;on of my phone real quick.” 

Another track Gene describes as a “total onslaught” is “Terror Construct,” which he wrote about the way the media and corpora;ons team up to spread fear among the masses so they can con;nue to fill their  pockets. “There’s no ques;on about it,” Hoglan says. “We are force-fed fear. It definitely comes at us  from all sides – the lea and the right – and it’s everywhere, you can’t escape it because it comes from all  angles. It’s terrible, but that’s how our society is gemng wired. People are forced to live in fear all the  ;me because, for the networks and the big corpora;ons, fear means big money. If you put fear into the  audience, they stay glued to the television and they watch all the commercials.” 

The seeds of Ex%nc%on Level Event were planted in late 2013 between the ;me when Testament  stopped touring to work on their new record and Hoglan was scheduled to work on his next major  project. 

“I finally had some ;me, so I said to Jim and vocalist Ron Rinehart, ‘Hey, I kinda have some ;me now.  Would you guys be interested in trying Dark Angel again?,’ Hoglan recalls. “Because every ;me I’m over  in Europe or some other country, the promoters of all these fes;vals and journalists are always asking,  ‘You ever want to bring Dark Angel back? Let us know. We’d love to get some Dark Angel over here.’ Jim  and I had spoken about it, and he said, ‘Hey, it sounds like fun. Let’s see what we can do.’ That’s when we  put a toe in the water to find out if this would even work.” 

The band played a number of dates in Europe and South America. Then, in late 2014, Hoglan and  founding guitarist Jim Durkin got together to write a bunch of riffs. Since Durkin had established a  lucra;ve career outside the music industry and Hoglan was busy touring with Testament and working  with Dethklok, Death To All, and other projects, it was difficult for the two long;me Dark Angel members  to coordinate their schedules. “It didn’t help that Jim was living in Los Angeles and I was in San Diego,”  Hoglan says. “But we did as much as we could, and it was really fun to be jamming again. And the thing  that put the cherry on top was that we’d all grown up as human beings a liKle bit. So, we had really good  communica;on. We weren’t just a bunch of 20-year-old kids yelling at each other or gemng pissed off  over stupid things. It was just such a fun vibe. And we’ve always been a family. We’ve always felt like one.  So, we were like, ‘Hey, let’s book some more shows.” 

Aaer the first batch of wri;ng sessions for Ex%nc%on Level Event, Hoglan had to put wri;ng for Dark  Angel on hold un;l late 2022. With other obliga;ons behind him, Gene laser-focused on Dark Angel,  listening back to the jams he and Durkin made earlier, and wri;ng more than 10 new songs over the next  three months. With a full album of pummeling new songs, Hoglan flew to Vancouver to track the album  at the Armory. There, he and his bandmates worked with Rob Shallcross and Mike Fraser, and over a few  sessions, Dark Angel had recorded everything but the vocals.

“Mike and I have worked on a number of occasions before, da;ng all the way back to the Strapping  Young Lad, The New Black, Hoglan says. “He mixed all the last AC/DC records and some classic Aerosmith stuff. We laid down all the drums and as soon as that was done we got right into the guitars. Everybody  came up and laid a liKle bit down and it was an amazing experience. Then, all we had to do was get ;me  with Ron to do the vocals.” 

While Ex%nc%on Level Event is informed by all the playing and recording experience Hoglan has gained  over the decades, it’s deeply rooted in skull-bashing thrash and easily could have sloKed into the band’s  catalog aaer their fourth album 1991’s Time Does Not Heal. It’s more than a tremendous comeback from  well-respected thrash pioneers, it’s a new chapter for the band – despite the tragic death of founding  guitarist Jim Durkin in 2023 – and represents an authen;c tribute to the founda;ons of extreme thrash,  while pumng a foot forward to a future where anything is possible. 

“One thing Dark Angel was really, really good at was reinven;ng ourselves from album to album,” Hoglan  says. “None of our four records ever sounded like each other, and that’s why this album will fit perfectly  in with the rest of our catalog. It’s another reinven;on for Dark Angel, but it’s s;ll really, really heavy.”  

No one but Gene Hoglan could keep the heart of Dark Angel burning over the decade like an industrial  furnace. Even though he has ventured into mul;ple styles of thrash, extreme, and experimental metal,  he will always cherish thrash, the music form that launched his mul;faceted career. As a teenager,  Hoglan was already a dedicated drummer and a diehard headbanger who was a fixture of the LA metal  scene. Before he joined Dark Angel, he was the ligh;ng tech for Slayer and other underground metal  bands and traveled with Slayer on their first tour. 

Durkin and bassist Rob Yahn formed the band Shellshock in 1981 and recorded the demo “Into the  Inferno” in 1983 before they were hit with a cease-and-desist from another band named Shellshock and  changed their moniker to Dark Angel. Three demos later, Dark Angel landed the song “Welcome to the  Slaughter House” on Metal Massacre VI, which also featured tracks by Possessed, the Obsessed,  Hallow’s Eve, Nasty Savage and others. They followed their compila;on with their first full-length We  Have Arrived in 1985. Dark Angel con;nued working on new material, including the scorching “Merciless  Death,” “Perish in Flames,” and “The Burning of Sodom.” That’s when the Jack Schwartz, the band’s  drummer from 1983 to 1984, lea and Hoglan happily took his place. 

“When I joined, they were already a killer band and they were on the cusp of things,” Hoglan said. “And  when I came in, Jim finally had a partner in musical crime. We both wanted everything to be really heavy  and brutal. Like, the sky’s the limit for heaviness. Even with Jack in the band, the members of Dark Angel had five different direc;ons they would’ve liked to see the band go in. When I joined, we finally had a  majority of two guys who wanted the same thing. We wanted to be a smack to the jaw, with music that  was as savage as we could make it. We wanted to cut heads off with our music.” 

Durkin and Hoglan wrote the vast majority of the band’s second album Darkness Descends, which  included the blazing ;tle track, the face-scorcher “Death is Certain (Life is Not),” and the eight-plus  minute epic “Black Prophecies.” And Hoglan’s demon-crazed performances on “Merciless Death,” “Perish  in Flames” and “The Burning of Sodom” brought Dark Angel to a new level of brutality. 

“We were already bros, we were pals, so it was a preKy seamless transi;on for me to step in and work  with Jim to make the band way heavier,” says Hoglan. “Our vocalist had some outside interests that 

didn’t blend with what we wanted to do, so we really had to work hard with him to get a great  performance. I wouldn’t call it coaching. It was more like threats and hazing from me and Jim. We were  preKy brutal with him in the studio to get him to perform the songs with the right kind of savagery and  anger that they needed. But he definitely stepped it up. You can’t say that We Have Arrived had the  same kind of vocals as Darkness Descends.” 

In search of new ventures, Yahn lea Dark Angel aaer he tracked the bass parts for Darkness Descends,  which paved the way for Mike Gonzalez. The vocalist’s decision to quit less than a week before the band  was scheduled to launch a tour for Darkness Descends led to a far more complicated situa;on. “He  started gemng into some things that didn’t blend well with the band’s touring schedule,” Hoglan  explains.  

“Meanwhile, Darkness Descends was blowing up and we were scheduled to tour with Possessed in early  ’87. So, Jim Drabos, a friend of ours from a band called Death Force stepped in to grab the mic for us,  and he did a great job.” 

Impressed by how quickly and easily Drabos vibed with the rest of the band, Dark Angel asked him to  step onboard. Hoglan was already wri;ng songs for the next album and was hoping the singer he was  working with would embrace the opportunity to take part. However, he wasn’t interested in singing on a  new album or even playing any more shows.  

“It was kind of strange,” says Hoglan. “He said, ‘Thank you very much, guys. It was always my dream to  tour the United States. I just did it, and now I’m gonna quit the music industry. My dream was just  fulfilled, and now I’m done.’”  

For the next 10 months, Dark Angel searched long and hard for a new vocalist. Frustrated, they tried to  make the band work again with “the old vocalist,” but aaer a few shows together, it was clear that they  needed fresh blood. They audi;oned many singers but couldn’t find one who would fit the band. As it  turned out, the perfect match was Ron Rinehart, a guy Hoglan had seen before singing in the LA band  Messiahs. Hoglan and Durkin thought Rinehart was a great vocalist, but weren’t impressed by his band, which lacked the ferocity he sought in a vocalist. Jim reached out to Rinehart anyway to ask him to  audi;on for Dark Angel, and as soon as the band started playing, Rinehart picked up the mic and started  to roar. 

“Jim went, ‘Man, I wish we had this guy all along,’” recalls Hoglan. “I felt the same way ’cause Ron was so  enthusias;c, so into it. He was the polar opposite of our other vocalists. He had a good work ethic. He  was ready to put the ;me in. He was a cool guy, and he had a great look. So, we threw Ron right into the  mix and started recording.” 

The first Dark Angel album to feature Rinehart, Leave Scars upped the ante on Darkness Descends,  featuring more complex rhythmic shias and longer songs, while retaining the speed-thrash lacera;ons that pushed the band into the next level of extreme metal. Within the nightmarish firestorms lie  welcome experimenta;ons, such as the creepy “Worms,” the cinema;c instrumental “Cauteriza;on” and  a wild take on Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song.” But while the album was full of strong material, the lo-fi  produc;on marred the overall sonic impact a bit. 

“We were all used to hearing bad-sounding thrash records, and that’s okay when you’re first star;ng out,  but when you’re on your third record you goKen step up the produc;on, and that didn’t happen,” says 

Hoglan. We should have had a more cohesive sound happening and we take all the blame for the sound  of Leave Scars. And that’s why we brought in Terry Date for our next album, Time Does Not Heal. We  said, let’s just mi;gate the issues and work with someone great. That way, we know it’s gonna sound  killer.” 

Dark Angel released Time Does Not Heal, in 1991, and along with the upgrade in produc;on came a  revised approach to songwri;ng. The band proved it could s;ll lock it’s foot to the gas pedal on the ;tle  track, “Trauma and Catharsis” and “The New Preiesthood.” But “Pain’s Inven;on, Madness” and “Act of  Contri;on” are slower and more melodic, giving Rinehart more of a chance to belt out actual notes  instead of just bark. Too busy with outside projects at the ;me of its release, Durkin sat out the album  cycle, leaving Hoglan to tackle more rhythm guitar and almost all of the songwri;ng. He was joined by  the new guitarist BreK Eriksen, who contributed to the songwri;ng, but ul;mately lea before the band  finished touring. 

“Time Does Not Heal was a different kind of album for us par;ally because Jim lea, and we got BreK.  Before, Jim and I each wrote about 50 percent of the songs, and now I’m suddenly doing 65 or 70  percent of the wri;ng, which added more rhythm changes and complexity because I get bored easily.  But also, I did not know how to self-edit songs back then, which is why they were so long.” 

By the ;me the band finished touring for Time Does Not Heal speed-thrash was no longer the most  extreme game in town, having been replaced by death metal. Fans who had latched onto Dark Angel  because they were the bridge to the next heaviest thing, stepped off the bridge and embraced bands like Death, Morbid Angel, Deicide, and Napalm Death for an even more punishing aural assault than that of  Dark Angel. 

“Before death metal came along, thrash metal was the heaviest thing around,” Hoglan recalls. “Everyone  was like, ‘Oh my God, this is so psycho;c and heavy. Nothing’s gonna get heavier than this! Oh, wait…’  And all of a sudden you’ve got Morbid Angel, Death, Obituary, Cannibal Corpse — all these kick-ass death  metal bands that definitely took the spotlight away from a lot of thrash bands.  

“Kids went, ‘Hey, thrash metal is not so extreme anymore. Check out grindcore. Check out death metal!’  And all these thrash bands were kind of lea in the dust. So Dark Angel kind of dissolved for a while, and I  got into this more extreme death metal stuff. But I always knew speed wasn’t everything and that thrash  would come back because everything happens in cycles. And if there’s one cool thing I heard straight  

from the horse’s mouths over the last 30-something years, it’s that Dark Angel had a major influence on  all the death metal bands, the grindcore bands, and the black metal bands. And it feels good to know I  played a role in all of that.” 

As Hoglan says, music – especially metal – is a cyclical style of music, and about 20 years aaer the dawn  of thrash, the old-school fans started turning their cousins, nephews, sons and daughters to the music  and suddenly The Big Four were big business, Testament, Exodus and others were major tour aKrac;ons,  and Dark Angel were back in demand. The band officially reformed in the 2010s and played select shows in 2014, 2015, 2018, and 2019.  

Durkin took the stage with the band, and everyone had a blast playing influen;al speed-thrash songs for  newcomers and old-school fans alike. But while Durkin was dedicated to the band, there was a point  where he started dealing with personal issues and he made it clear that he would always be there in 

spirit, but there would be ;mes he wouldn’t be able to perform. He handpicked Laura Chris;ne (Warface, Meldrum, Nukem, Zimmer’s Hole) to fill in for him when the band returned to the road in  2022. 

“I was not part of that decision one iota,” Hoglan says. “I found out later that back in 2018 when we  played a show in Oakland, California at the California Death Fest. At the end of the night Jim took Laura  aside. I was in an elevator going up to say goodnight to everybody and Jim steps in the elevator and  announces to Laura, ‘Tonight was my last Dark Angel show, and I want you to be my replacement.’ Laura  was looking at me, and then at him, and then she says, ‘Hey, I’m honored but did you guys talk about  this?’ I said, ‘This is the first I’m hearing about any of this.’ And Jim goes, ‘Well, you’re my favorite  guitarist and if I’m not gonna play any shows with the band, I want you to replace me.’ “As ;me went on,  it wasn’t Jim’s last show with the band. He came back and played more shows. But for whatever reason,  at that moment, right then and there, he had decided, this is it for me. He later relented and Laura was  great about it. She said, “This band should be with Jim Durkin. He’s the founding member.” 

The rest of the band were aware Durkin had some health issues, but they didn’t seem incapacita;ng. It  seemed like he just didn’t want to tour anymore, and the decision was made that, with his blessings,  Laura would take his spot on the stage with the caveat that he could return at any ;me. 

“We did a fes;val in April of 2023, in Texas called Hell’s Heroes. It was to be Laura’s first show with the  band. As go-;me rapidly approached, Laura rehearsed with Dark Angel, but she also reached out to  Durkin to reiterate that he was Dark Angel’s lead guitarist, not her. “She reached out to him right before  the gig, and said, ‘Jim, I just want you to know that I’m merely just stepping into your shoes for this gig. If  you decide three days before the show that you want to jump in and play the show, that’s great. I’m all  for it.’ And he explained to her, ‘Look, that’s not gonna happen.’” 

At the ;me, Durkin was suffering from liver problems that were far more serious than anyone in the  band knew. They were completely shocked and uKerly unprepared when they found out he died from  liver disease on March 8, 2023. 

“We knew he had a couple of medical issues, but we didn’t expect him to be taken from us – any of us,”  Hoglan says. “We knew Jim had something that was going to keep him from playing shows with us, but  we did not know that it was something that was gonna take his life. We had no idea. That’s why it was so  crushing to hear that our brother passed. Because even though he might not have been a part of the live  por;on of Dark Angel at that point, we were s;ll wri;ng together. He told me, ‘I might not be playing live  with the band as much as I used to, but I s;ll wanna write.’ And I was fine with that.”  

Hoglan is pleased that the ;tle track of Ex%nc%on Level Event isn’t just 100 percent Durkin, it’s  completely unrelen;ng, burs;ng with speed, excitement, and Durkin’s knife-slash riffs. Beyond that,  Hoglan insists that the rest of the songs on the album – which he and Chris;ne composed before the full  band contributed their input in the studio – are heavily inspired by Durkin’s spirit and performance style. 

“Before the end of everything, I told Jim, ‘Yeah, let’s keep wri;ng together,’” explains Hoglan. “It didn’t  happen, and I ended up with just one full song from Jim. But Jim’s presence is felt all over the record  because Jim’s songwri;ng was a really big influence for me. I had only played guitar for a couple years  before I got into Dark Angel, and being around Jim day aaer day, year upon year, had a huge impact on  my songwri;ng and I have Jim to thank for that.”

Having passed away two years ago, Durkin’s sudden death is s;ll trauma;c for Dark Angel and especially  Hoglan. At the same ;me, he takes biKersweet pride in knowing that Jim’s playing and performances live on through him and Dark Angel, not only when the band plays his old riffs, but also in the con;nued  influence Durkin has on the band’s new songs. 

“One of the last things I told him was, “Jim, dude, you’re my original guitar hero,” Hoglan recalls. “My  en;re guitar style is based on your style because you are who I really learned how to play guitar from.”  So, my guitar approach with Dark Angel is Jim Durkin’s approach. When I write for the band, I’m  thinking, ‘What would Jim do here?’ That’s why his presence is massively all over this new record. Every  single song. I wanted to make it to where people are like, “Yeah, Jim wrote that riff. Oh, there’s another  Jim riff” because Jim wrote all the best riffs in the band, forever.”