[ From the August, 1987 issue of "Metal Mania" magazine ]
                    [ Typed in and submitted by Mike Gray ]


                     Dark Angel's Brand of Caffeine Thrash
                                By Andy Patrizio

       From the land of sunglasses and oranges comes a band banned from
every club in Hollywood.


    No beating around the bush here.  Black/Satanic metal is as much fun
as root canal therapy.  All this acting evil and sick just to sell, what,
8,000 albums?  While bands do this bullshit dance, Mrs. Gore (Mrs. PMRC to
you, pal) is given another round of ammunition to use against us.
    Not to mention that 99 percent of all black metal albums are painfully
inept, displaying all the musical ability of four drunken chimpanzees in a
music store.  In the dark.  With gloves on.
    So when I received a package from Combat with Dark Angel's latest
effort, Darkness Descends, and looked at the song titles, there was an
initial urge to toss it into the dumpster.
    But I didn't.  I dropped the sucker into a tape deck.  This was the
fastest, loudest thing I ever heard.  Slayer sounded like Def Leppard
compared to this!  And the lyrics were almost on par with Metallica -
intelegent, with a message and meaning.
    So, two or three phone calls later and Dark Angel drummer Gene Holgan
is on the other end of the phone, albiet with a hacking cough.  It is Gene
who writes most of the lyrics for the L.A. band, and Guitarist Jim Durkin
writes the music, either with his guitar cohort Eric Meyer (who was asked by
Dave Mustaine to join Megadeth before the arrival of Chris Poland but chose
to stay with DA) or Gene, who plays a "little" guitar.
    They have yet to go on a full-scale tour of the states, though they've
played sporadically with Megadeth, Slayer, Possessed, DRI, COC, and the
Cro-Mags.  But Gene promises there will be a full tour soon.  "As soon as
Combat says 'Go,' we're gone."
    Once they do, there will probably be a lot of fans thrashing along
with them, because the album is doing extremely well.  Coughed Gene,
"Combat said 'we're sending them out left and right, all the record stores
are ordering them.'  A few record stores I know around here can't keep them
in stock.  That's a real kick in the butt for us.  We feel real good.
    "You could call us thrash metal, speed metal, death metal, any one of
those titles and we'd fit," Gene stated.  "We kinda call ourselves
caffeine metal, because we look like we're on a zillion milligrams of
caffeine when we're onstage.  I'm usually up on stage after having 75
Cokes of Pepsis, or whatever, and a few caffeine pills."  However, he says
he stays away from real drugs and drinking.  They just say "not."
    From the beginning, Dark Angel has stayed away from the satanic
lyrics, although song titles can be very misleading.  "Anybody that labels
us satanic obviously haven't read the lyrics," Gene proclaims.  "They
haven't checked what Dark Angel is about.
 And if anybody is going to throw an immediate label on us, or if somebody
comes up to us and says, 'Dark Angel, why are you a satanic band?' I know
immediately they haven't read the lyrics."
    Of course, it's the band's fault in a way.  With a name like Dark
Angel and song titles like "Darkness Descends," "Perish in Flames," and
"Merciless Death," it's easy to see how they get tagged as such.
    "If you look it up in the dictionary, the historic romantic term of
Dark Angel is a vampire," he said, adding that people look at the wings in
the band logo, and at the song titles and make their own assumptions.  And
he feels the titles themselves aren't satanic.  "'Hell's On It's Knees'
means 'I'm stronger than you, you stupid satanist.'"
    Like many musicians in thrash/speed metal, Gene has one song based on
a comic book character.  The title track, "Darkness Descends," is about
"Judge Dredd."  Those fans of Judge Dredd will be able to pick up on the
lyrics, Gene says.  For those who don't care for Judge Dredd, it can be
taken as "kind of an end of the world piece."
    "Darkness Descends" has some real tongue twisters in it, with lines
like "Perforation impending, not one to assuage / The human remnents of
the Earth / Pandemic winds chill the soul / Eradication of the will /
Nihilism extracts it's toll."  Singing words like that in normal time can
be tough, but there guys are in double time, so Don Doty deserves a lot of
credit as a vocalist, even if he does come across as a Tom Araya clone at
times.  Gene maintains there is a reason for the big words.  "I hope that
these words will inspire someone to open up a dictionary.  I know I have
learned a lot from song lyrics."
    But he's not trying to play teacher.  "I'm not here to teach anybody
anything.  I think there's a lot more intelligence on the [metal] scene
than a lot of people think."
    While Gene is all for using college level words, however, the rest of
the band was not.  "The band was kind of afraid when I was writing the
lyrics to 'Darkness Descends,' that nobody would understand it. I said,
'Well, screw it.  If they understand, they do, if they don't, they can
say 'Fuck it, I don't like these lyrecs because I don't understand them,'
or they can say 'I don't understand these lyrics, but I want to, so I'm
gonna whip out a dictionary or a thesarus.'  I don't write with a
thesaurus or anything.  I just wanted to stretch myself a little bit.
And those lyrics took a long time to write."
    When you get the album (how's that for presumption?), read the album
sleeve.  There is a mention of all the clubs in L.A. that banned them.  "A
lot of clubs out here aren't used to caffeine metal bands.  They're used
to the poseurs, who come in and go 'Yeah, we're gonna rock this house tonight.
Come on, put you hands in the air and let's rock!'  I fucking hate that!"
    He continues, "Our crowd gets really violent.  To us, we're having
fun, we're having a great time.  If a kid breaks his nose diving off and
missing, they go "Look what I got, battle scars at Dark Angel!"  The clubs
freak out, they think 'God, they're going to sue us.'"  Thus the band was
banned from every club in L.A.
    Now, with the huge success of the album, clubs in L.A. have relented,
allowing them back, to pretty large crowds.  "Clubs are calling us now,"
he said with a little pride.  "Back when we made that special thanks list,
nobody wanted to touch us."
    But with an album selling so well, and Combat behind the band totally,
the qwestion comes up:  With the success of Metallica and Slayer, will
Dark Angel be on a major soon?  We may have been on the phone, but I know
Gene shrugged his shoulders.
    "A few more bands are gonna get sucked up into the majors.  I think
the door is kinda closing for thrash metal.  It's hard for a young band to
start now and make it."
    And that's what Gene wants to avoid.  "We might not want to be on a
major label.  We might want to stick with Combat because Combat is
stylin'.  They're behind up so much and it brings up the question, 'Is it
better to be a small band on a big label or a big band on a small label?' 
If nothing happens with a major label, we're damn happy with Combat."

[End Of Article]