Death Angel - Act III (1990)^{Release ID: 2890}

I have to say I find everyone's fascination with Death Angel's debut album The Ultra-Violence to be a bit strange. It's a fine debut, and a thrashing beast of an album. But it wasn't all that memorable and certain parts were just annoying. Act III is to me where these Filipino relatives really got their stuff together. While they certainly don't keep the musicianship in check, it's far superior to everything they released beforehand. In fact, the band really cover a wide range of styles on Act III, with several ballads, funk and rock moments complimenting the shredding. The vocalist is also much improved and manages to cross all these genre movements with style.

Seemingly Endless Time is awesome, as are Stop, Stagnant and Falling Asleep. This album is an essential album for fans of thrash metal, but particularly those ones who don't mind a little bit of experimentation and variety in their music. Good stuff!

My first exposure to popular San Francisco Bay Area thrash metallers Death Angel came through the song “Mistress of Pain” from their highly regarded 1987 debut album “The Ultra-Violence” when I heard it played on a late-night underground metal radio program some time in 1989. That experience led me to investigate the band’s first two albums through the older skaters at my school which left me with mixed feelings to be honest. You see, while “The Ultra-Violence” is certainly a raw & super-thrashy effort that reeks of naïve enthusiasm, it’s also inherently unpolished & sounds like it needed a little more work to me. I get a fair bit of enjoyment out of it but have never found it to be essential with the pitchy vocals of front man Mark Osegueda being particularly questionable. It was definitely a step up from 1988’s “Frolic Through The Park” though which I found very little joy in & still regard as Death Angel’s only real failure to this day. Somehow though, I managed to see past that blip & would purchase 1990’s “Act III” third album on cassette shortly after it was released which would coincide with my brother Ben getting into thrash metal quite nicely because “Act III” contained the sort of crossover appeal that could draw new listeners into the fold. It’s hard to tell how much of my affection for “Act III” is drawn from nostalgia for a simpler time these days though because those were certainly exciting years for the two of us as we discovered an endless run of classic metal releases in such a short period & would share the experience between us a lot of the time which brought us closer together. Still... going into this latest revisit I was fully expecting to be dishing out a solid four-star rating based on my memories of a strong & creative offering. Let’s see how that assumption stacked up now, shall we?

Where “Frolic Through The Park” was very much a failed attempt to break away from your standard thrash metal model, “Act III” sees Death Angel returning with a better understanding of what they were trying to achieve, this time giving the same concept a much better crack. The production & musicianship are excellent & the song-writing is more fluent & fully developed. While “Act III” is still very much a thrash metal album, it often doesn’t “feel” like one as it sees the band branching out into several disparate subgenres to great effect with funk/alternative metal & acoustic rock being the most prominent new directions. The vast majority of the tracks include riffs that clearly utilize the thrash template though which never lets you forget who you’re listening to. It’s a very consistent record with no weak tracks to speak of & Oseguado seems to have finally found his niche from a vocal perspective as I find him much more easily swallowed on this occasion. The lead guitar work is excellent too which is always a good thing for someone like me.

Opener “Seemingly Endless Time” is the fan favourite & with good reason as it’s a wonderfully catchy thrasher that kicks things off well. Interestingly though, it’s the funky alternative metal tracks “Discontinued” & album highlight “Stagnant” that I find to be the other standouts with Death Angel proving themselves to possess an uncanny knack for stretching their creative boundaries & writing catchy vocal hooks, often supported by well-placed gang vocals. Even the two ballads "Veil of Deception" & "A Room With a View" are pretty decent inclusions that I never feel like skipping. That being said though, I consistently found myself reaching out for that four-star rating I assumed I’d ultimately achieve this week but I never quite managed to grab onto it. At the end of the day, I just couldn’t find enough timeless metal classics to get it over the line, instead being left feeling generally positive without being overly enthused. This left me wondering if I’d simply overrated “Act III” back in the day due to the fact that I found it to be their most appealing album to the time & really wanted to love Death Angel like most thrashers.

I’m not sure about that but what I am sure about is that “Act III” is still Death Angel’s most complete record, even if I can see why some of your more hardened thrash fans might struggle with it a bit. I guess it’s saying something about my limited passion for the band that I can’t get my favourite Death Angel album up to a four-star rating but I think that’s an accurate reflection of where I sit with them actually. The Bay Area bands seemed to inevitably garner big props from the global scene but I’m not sure it was always based on merit with some of those artists not being any better than many others from around the globe. For those with a taste for a slightly different take of the Bay Area model though, I'd recommend having a bit of patience with "Act III" as there's some gold to be found if you can accept its conscious diversity.

Mediocre.  That's the word that comes to mind whenever I hear the band name, Death Angel.  Largely this is because of the complete lack of punch to any of Mark Osegueda's vocals.  He has always struck me as lacking any range or true power and this has always in my mind held the band back from climbing the popularity stakes in my thrash metal preferences.

Act III seems to suffer worst of all their releases, I mean as an example, quite what the band were thinking when they recorded Veil of Deception is beyond me.  Placing it as track number three on the record certainly makes if far too prominent in the line of sight and disrupts the flow of the album completely.  Having started well enough with one of the first thrash tracks I ever saw the video to with Seemingly Endless Time things take an instant dive with the energetic yet clunky Stop.  But even early on in the album there's obviously very little in the actual way of thrash metal.  And here lies the problem!  This isn't a thrash metal record, not really.  I mean yes, there's some attempt at riffing on The Organisation but it doesn't set the pulse racing.  It is all so underwhelming.

The funk element to Discontinued really grates which is a shame because bass slapping aside it is actually one of the more riff orientated tracks.  Unfortunately it just feels like the band are trying to be experimental beyond the boundaries of their actual talent or skill levels.  Two (yes fucking two) ballads on a thrash metal record?  Give me a break chaps.

Whenever the record starts to give glimpses or glimmers of hope to me there always seems to be something unsatisfactory waiting around the corner that disrupts or completely destroys the flow which suggests to me that even at album number three the band still were not that good at songwriting and learning no real penchant for their chosen art form.