San Francisco’s Death Angel are a product of the bustling Bay Area thrash metal scene of the ’80s. Combining serious guitar crunch and speed with technical expertise, they create complex thrash filled with time changes and tricky arrangements, and are considered to be one of the “big eight” of the genre, alongside Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Testament, Exodus, and Overkill.
Emerging in 1982, the group found underground success with their first two albums — 1987’s The Ultra-Violence and 1988’s Frolic Through the Park — before dipping their feet into the mainstream with their 1989 major-label debut Act III.
Death Angel aren’t just a band, they are a family. Formed in the early ’80s by cousins Mark Osegueda (vocals), Rob Cavestany (lead guitar), Gus Pepa (rhythm guitar), Dennis Pepa (bass), and Andy Galeon (drums), the group was also precocious; the band members recorded their 1986 Kirk Hammett-produced “Kill as One” demo while still in their teens. In fact, drummer Galeon was only 14 when Death Angel issued their first album, 1987’s astoundingly mature The Ultra-Violence on Enigma Records. The following year’s sophomore Frolic Through the Park offered a few slight refinements, most notably in the uncharacteristically humorous and accessible single “Bored.”
Signing with the Geffen Records hit factory the following year seemed like the next step toward certain stardom, and Death Angel left nothing to chance with their third album, 1990’s superlative career highlight Act III
Vio-Lence
Incite
Now close to 15-years into a career where everything was earned and nothing was taken for granted, INCITE bridges the gap between multiple crowds across various metal sub-genres. As renegade disciples of trailblazing architects like Pantera, Slayer, Sepultura, and Machine Head, INCITE raise the torch for trend-killing and hipster-smashing metal. INCITE is as much a part of the fabric of the style championed by Lamb Of God as the surge of newer bands like Power Trip. INCITE perfected their signature brand of extreme sounds playing shows with DevilDriver, Crowbar, Brujeria, Soulfly, Cavalera Conspiracy, and Six Feet Under. This is a band who can open for Gorgoroth one night and Cancer Bats the next, converting true-believers out of people who grew up on Deftones or Immortal. The band’s fifth album, Built to Destroy, is a visceral, urgent, voracious distillation of modern metal, with reverence for the past, produced by Steve Evetts (The Dillinger Escape Plan, Suicide Silence) and mastered by Zeuss (Rob Zombie, Hatebreed).
