Dark Angel is touring behind Extinction Level Event, its first album of new material since 1991.
Dark Angel is touring behind Extinction Level Event, its first album of new material since 1991. Credit: Courtesy Photo / Dark Angel

Many music fans remember the thrash metal explosion of the mid-1980s for the subgenre’s Big Four: Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax. 

However, there were myriad acts pushing the speed and intensity of metal into new frontiers at the time. A select few left an indelible mark on the music’s evolution, even if they didn’t become household names like the Big Four. 

LA’s Dark Angel was one such innovator. Thanks to frenetic drumming, creative songwriting and sheer brutality, the band is widely credited not just for ratcheting up thrash’s intensity but also creating a foundation for another extreme style that followed — death metal. 

Led by drummer and songwriter Gene “The Atomic Clock” Hoglan, Dark Angel will perform Friday, Sept. 12, at San Antonio’s Vibes Event Center with support from Sacred Reich, Hirax and Void. The group is touring behind Extinction Level Event, its first album of new material since 1991’s lauded Time Does Not Heal. 

We caught up with Hoglan — who also plays drums in Deathklok and has spent time in Testament, Death, Fear Factory, Strapping Young Lad and more — via phone to discuss the new Dark Angel album, the band’s legacy and the evolution of its sound. 

You’re a man of many musical projects. Why’s Dark Angel worth keeping in rotation?

The fact that it’s Dark Angel. The fact it’s us. The fact it’s created by us. I have a large part in the writing of it, and as my wife has regularly explained to me, “Hey, you’ll like this story, it’s about you.” (Laughs.) This is where I’m at musically, where we are at musically — everybody who’s contributed to the album. The performances are great. The riffs are fantastic. The songs are crushing. I think it’s a deadly metal record. I’m really excited about it. It sounds super fresh to me. …

I mean, on the production side of things, it’s a departure from a lot of the current sounds out there. Sure, we utilize technology, but we are definitely a live act to a large degree. We’re using real amps, real playing. This isn’t a computer-driven, gridded, Autotune-perfect record. The performances are all real and all very live, and we all worked really hard to make this album as bitchin’ as we could.

You’re resurrecting a band that fans are really familiar with, but one that’s gone through multiple musical evolutions and has probably continued evolving in the decades since it last put out original material. Was there much thought given about how to balance your growth as musicians while also giving people a familiar sound?

Yes, there was. … And, really, the best way to move forward with a new set of Dark Angel material would be to acknowledge those earlier eras, of course. They’re very important parts of the Dark Angel legacy. But anybody who knows Dark Angel — who’s familiar with our trajectory — also will be very cognizant of the fact that we’ve never repeated ourselves on record. The first album, We Have Arrived, did not sound like Darkness Descends,and Darkness didn’t sound like Leave Scars and Time Does Not Heal.

So, anybody who considers themselves a Dark Angel fan, they will be well aware of the evolutionary process of Dark Angel, the non-repeating of sounds and approaches. So, ultimately, I just kind of felt, “Well, hey, what if we were to just take the approach of what if Dark Angel just kept putting out records throughout this entire 30-plus-year period. Where would the band be right now?” And that was kind of the most appealing approach.

I’m not going to try to replicate Darkness Descends, or Time Does Not Heal or Leave Scars or We Have Arrived,for that matter. But, writing from here and now, this is very, very Dark Angel — what it’s like to write as a Dark Angel of our current abilities and mindsets and approaches. So, that was the best way of moving forward with writing new material — for me anyway. That made it really, really exciting.

During Dark Angel’s early run, you guys were playing fast, frenetic music that’s now recognized as being ahead of its time, especially in its influence on death metal. When you were laying that stuff down, did you have any idea that you were creating something new and influential?

Well, I didn’t know if it was ahead of its time. It was just, “Here are our songs, here’s us doing what we do, and here you go!” At that time, we were called Slayer clones, and I’m like, “Oh my God, is there anything that could be less true about that statement?” Because I was around Slayer before I was in Dark Angel and—

Well, I guess there was a comparable speed and intensity. Still, the sound was quite different.

I agree. As for our intensity, we had to slow down when we went to the studio to record Dark Angel, because [producer] Randy Burns was like, “Hey, you guys, can you slow this stuff down? This is way over the top. It is just a giant mess.” … If YouTube was a thing back in ’85 and ’86, you’d see footage and go, “What is this unbelievable pile of noise?” But we felt really strongly about the record.

I was 18 years old. That was my first time in the studio. This was the band’s second time in the studio. And there was no template for what we were doing. There were no rules. There wasn’t any sort of thing to try to follow. …

But as for its longevity, you hope for something like that, but you can never plan for it. And so when I’m 18 years old and the rest of the guys are 20, there was not a lot to suggest to us that this was going to have an impact 40 years later, or that we were going to go on to influence Grammy-winning songs with certain things we recorded. We couldn’t foresee that. Nor foreseeing influencing other bands or other genres to come. We were just trying to put out our own music. And there was that sort of adorableness to it, of just like, “Hey, here’s this really young, very aggressive band that sounds like they mean business.”

$37 and up, 5:30 p.m. Friday, Sept. 12, Vibes Event Center, 1223 E. Houston St., (210) 255-3833, facebook.com/vibeseventcenter.

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This article appears in Sep 3-17, 2025.

Sanford Nowlin is editor-in-chief of the San Antonio Current. He holds degrees from Trinity University and the University of Texas at San Antonio, and his work has been featured in Salon, Alternet, Creative...