"Gene was a great interview. I remember meeting him later that year. Don Doty was sick and couldn't sing. Gene was sick as well, but he sang in addition to playing the drums. I thought he was gonna drop dead after the show."Thanks to Mike Gray's tireless efforts, here are two more articles about Dark Angel! The first is from the 5/89 issue of "Metal Mania" magazine, and the second is from the 10/91 issue of "Metal Maniacs". Sorry for taking so long to put them up, Mike.
Thanks to Spike Steffenhagen, here's another interview that he himself did in November, 1990. Thanks a bunch, Spike!
We also have an interview with Gene Hoglan from the May, 1989 issue of "Metal Hammer" magazine.
And here's a cool interview with Gene Hoglan, Ron Rinehart, and Brett Eriksen from the December, 1989 issue of "Metal Force" magazine.
6/29/00: Bonus! An interview with Jim Durkin in Metal Nightmare Zine! Many thanks to Tom Wren for submitting it!
Full album lyrics are in the main directory, while lyrics to individual songs are in the "singles" directory.
I've also now made all of the Dark Angel tabulatures I have available here, in http://www.afn.org/~riffer/projects/dark-angel/tabs/
Thanks to Bruce, I've now got HTML versions of the complete lyrics for several albums. Check out:
If you have any lyrics to a Dark Angel song that aren't in the collection, please submit them to me and I'll add 'em. Same for any lyrical corrections. Representatives of the music industry can bugger off, you don't own these lyrics damn it. Gene can beat me up personally if he cares...
I asked Jack if it was ok to give out his e-mail address on the webpage, and he said sure. You can e-mail him at:
I asked Ron if he had any good Dark Angel stories and he related this amazing true story to me:
"VIKING
and Dark Angel hung out quite a bit in the mid to late 80's. We
opened for them at the Whiskey, Country Club, Fender's Ballroom, etc. Typically,
after soundcheck we'd go grab something to eat.
One night before a show, most of the band members and road crew walked
into a pizza place on the Strip. Turned out to be an exclusive, $35-a-person
type restaurant that none of us could afford, so Gene Hoglan suggested
we go to Oki-Dog instead. Most of us didn't know what we were in for, but
we piled in the trucks and followed Gene.
Oki-Dog, as it turned out, was a gay hangout in Hollywood. Gene was
anything but gay, but he claimed the food was so good, it was even worth
the torment of being surrounded by drag queens and bikers offering to give
you a ride. We all ordered Oki-Dogs, the premeire menu item.
Let me explain the contents of an Oki-Dog... It is a giant flour tortilla
with two foot-long greasy hot dogs of unknown origin. In between them,
they pile a mound of equally grease-infested pastrami, grated cheese, chili,
and various other gastro-intestinal disaters. (Turned out the health department
closed them down just days after our visit.) It wasn't more than 20 minutes
later that Gene was sitting on the sidewalk, slumped next to an aluminum
trash can with his face in it, moaning, 'Come on Oki-Dog... come on Oki-Dog...'
He wasn't in good shape after the Oki-Dog, but we managed to get him
back to the Whiskey-A-Go-Go for the show. As was his custom, Gene emptied
a package of Vivarin (pure caffeine) into his hand and downed them all
with water.
Between VIKING's
and Dark Angel's sets was a band whose name escapes me, but whose
drummer did happen to use flaming drumsticks. (This unfortunately factors
into the further events of the evening.)
Dark Angel took the stage, killing as always. After their second
song, Gene reaches down and grabs one of the many cups of water that the
roadies always left for him, and downs it in a single gulp.
It's the previous drummer's lighter fluid.
Gene spews out the little that remains in his mouth, but the majority
of it has been internalized. Very flammable. Very poisonous. Very unfortunate.
Understand that he's got Oki-Dog, an entire package of Vivarin, and
a cup full of lighter fluid in his belly. Anyone fully human would have
died, but Gene actually finished the set, complete with encores, without
ever missing a beat."
And, from what we all can tell, Gene managed to survive intact from that experience. I'm personally pretty amazed, :)
I asked Gene if he is indeed with Strapping Young Lad full-time
now and he confirmed it. He also referred to Dark Angel as "DFA"
so I asked him what the F stood for. He writes:
allow me to answer some of yer questions; the "F" of course stands for "F*kkin' ",
as it has since day one for me; yes, I am involved with Strapping pretty full-time,
although I still have plenty of time for extracurricular activities(both Testament and
Old Man's Child projects were done extra curricularly to Strapping). We just
got back this week from a European tour where we played Dynamo and were
scheduled to play with VanHalen, but that was cancelled. It was only one show,
so it was no biggie.
"I got to meet Gene Hoglan and the rest of the guys a few years back. They were playing a show with Wolfsbane (they sucked) and Overkill at the Cubby Bear bar in Chicago. After Dark Angel played Gene sat down at the bar next to me, he said he hadn't seen Overkill in awhile. I got his autograph and asked him a few questions. I told him I was in N.Y. City 2 or 3 years before and found an old metal magazine, it was very small and very cheap but it had Slayer on the cover and an interview inside. The guy doing the interview was named Gene Hoglan. I asked him if he was the Interviewer? He freaked and said he was, it turns out he was a roadie for Slayer when they first started and this mag was the first one to have them on the cover. I also told him that I had the Ultimate revenge 2 and thought it was great, he said thanks but there sound sucked. I told him I liked Death's sound but when I saw them at MetalFest they didn't move around the stage at all, no thrashing no nothing. And Chuck S. was a real dick to us in the crowd. Gene said Chuck was a dick at the Revenge show and said he thought Death as a band sucked. Funny ain't it."
6/29/00 - FACT: Dark Angel webpage finally gets updated! :)
6/19/98 - FACT: Gene Hoglan is now drummer for Strapping Young Lad and is working with the project full-time.