DARK ANGEL Has 'A Lot Of Great Ideas And Awesome Riffs' For Long-Awaited Comeback Album

Reactivated California thrash metal pioneers DARK ANGEL are continuing to work on material for their long-awaited comeback album. The band’s first CD since 1991’s “Time Does Not Heal” will feature the lineup that has performed sporadic live shows since reuniting in 2013: Gene Hoglan (drums), Eric Meyer (guitar), Jim Durkin (guitar), Ron Rinehart (vocals) and Michael Gonzalez (bass).

Speaking to The Aquarian Weekly, Rinehart stated about DARK ANGEL‘s next disc: “I honestly feel this — if all of us could get in the same place for a certain amount of time, it would be something that is easy to do. That being said, it’s hard to get the world’s greatest drummer [Hoglan] who travels with everybody, Gonz [Gonzalez] in New Mexico, and me here in Washington.

“We have a lot of great ideas and awesome riffs,” he continued. “Every time I hear a new riff, I just get super excited.

“I would rather wait and have something be amazing than rush and have something be crap.

“Now that it is so highly anticipated, it really is going to be nerve-wracking putting it out.

“I am always constantly singing, whether we are doing something or not. For me, I always look at as being a prize fighter. You always need to have your instrument ready and for me, my instrument is my voice, so I always want to be ready to go. If the band says we need to do this now, I don’t want to be the guy to nix that. I always want to be ready.”

He added: “This will be all-new material.”

Gene told KNAC.COM last year that he had “five or six songs ready to go” for DARK ANGEL‘s next album. “The stuff Jim‘s writing is deadly,” he said. “And I’m trying to carry forth the youthful energy and aggression of ‘Darkness Descends’ with a little bit of what we were doing with ‘Time Does Not Heal’ and some cool-ass ‘Leave Scars’ thrown in. It sounds like DARK ANGEL, but I’m trying to err on the side of hyper-aggression, and that’s cool with me. You never go wrong going heavier. So write a shit-ass heavy fucking record, that’s gold in my book.”

DARK ANGEL released two albums with Don Doty on vocals — 1984’s “We Have Arrived” and 1986’s “Darkness Descends” — before he exited the group and was replaced by Ron Rinehart (after a brief stint with Jim Drabos in 1987). The band issued two more studio LPs — 1989’s “Leave Scars” and 1991’s “Time Does Not Heal” — before calling it quits in 1992. Rinehart, Hoglan and Meyer reassembled DARK ANGEL more than a decade ago but were forced to abandon their reunion plans after health issues reportedly put Rinehart‘s singing career on hold.