Metal Hammer Vol.8 No.4 May 1st 1989 by Christine Natanael Californian Dreams: Shedding Light On The Angels ============================ Out of the searing underground of Los Angeles, an unlikely place for speed/death metal in the wake of such like bands as Guns N' Roses, comes the brutal sonic assalut of Dark Angel. Recently I had along chat with drummer Gene Hoglan about the line-up changes in the band and the new record. What's been happening with the guys who have been branded as being more brutal than Slayer? Tell us the ancient history of Dark Angel up to the arrival of your new singer. GH: "OK. I've got this one down to a science. In 1981 the band was formed at Downey High School, which was the alma mater of Metallica. The nucleus of the band was Jim Durkin on guitars, Don Doty on vocals and Rob Yuan on bass, and they had a revolving door of drummers even then. They recorded the WE HAVE ARRIVED demo in late 1982 and in early '84 they recruited Jack Schwartz on drums. In the summer of '84 they recruited Eric Meyer who is our second guitarist even to this day and they recorded WE HAVE ARRIVED in the summer of '84. In December I joined the band and WE HAVE ARRIVED was release in America on AzuraMetal Storm. It was released in February in Europe on Axe Killer Records. In the summer of '86 we got Mike Gonzales who is a godly person and Rob was out. We recorded DARKNESS DESCENDS in the Spring of '86 and in early '87 we went out on the road with Possessed on Combat's first Ultimate Revenge Tour. In the summer of '87 we had to boot out our singer Don Doty - Don had left once before in late '86 and we used Jim Drabos on tour - so in the summer of '87 after he had rejoined and everything was fine, we just got to the point where we couldn't deal with Don anymore. We just told him to go away and not come back. Then we got Ron Rinehart." WRECK So which rock did you find this guy Ron under and what happened with the other dude? GH: "Again, Don had left us on the eve of our US tour and we just thought, 'oh, my God, this guy--we can't believe this!'. He left the band twice - the first time he got in a car wreck. He was an uninsured driver, so he had to pay for everything out of his own pocket. He had a good job at the time that he was planning on leaving. But since he had to pay for everything out of his own pocket, he said 'look, I can't go on tour with you and that's all there is to it.' And so, we searched frantically for two weeks, then we found this person named Jim Drabos who was a friend of ours and he was singing in another L.A. band called Death Force. He has gone nowhere before or after he left, and he joined us for the tour. He said 'look, I'll tour with you guys but I'm not sure what's going on after that. Let's just do the tour now, and see what's up.' He worked out really well on the tour, but when he got home he quit to do his own project. So, Don rejoined. He had been calling and he said, 'look, I've got my stuff together now, everything's fine. I'm great. I'll have 100 per cent attitude adjustment on my part and everything will be great.' We just kept telling him, 'Don, leave us alone.' So finally we acquiesced to his rejoining and it worked out great for about a month or two. Don was there every practise, there early helping us to set up and stuff and not just showing up 20 minutes late and leaving 20 minutes early. But then it got to the point where he wouldn't show up to practices a week straight and when he would show up he'd show up an hour and a half late, and we just couldn't deal with it anymore. We had a few shows that we had to do scheduled and we just thought, 'well, after the last show that we had scheduled we will give him the axe.' And sure enough we did. This was in September 1987. We searched pretty comprehensively around the L.A. area for somebody, and boy, you name it, we tried them out. We tried out tons of strange people. BEER GUT "We were kind of worried about bringing somebody in from, say Chicago or New York or something, but we would do it anyway. And right as we were about to go national with our search for a singer we found Ron. He basically did crawl out of a rock. He came down to rehearsal one night kind of just to hang out and get to know us, and the next rehearsal he sang and it's corny but true, as soon as he started singing the search was over. He was great. He had a great attitude; he was a friendly guy. He had a great look even-- tattoos and a big old tubby beer gut and stuff. Everything's worked out fine since then. He has a great voice. He's very durable and very dynamic in his vocals. He can do anything, so that's nice to have. Hopefully he won't become an idiot and want to quit the band or something. Everybody in Europe will be seeing him very soon and I think everybody will enjoy him. There's maybe one per cent hardcore, die-hard Don Doty fans who wouldn't like it no matter who we got--but more people than were expected took to Ron immediately." Going to the writing of the album, who does most of the compositions, who does most of the lyrics, and tell me about some of the theories and things behind the songs themselves. GH: "Well, Jim Durkin and myself do all of the music writing. We pretty much split everything 50/50 each in terms of songwriting. There are some songs that I might write a few riffs more than Jim and vice versa. I wrote all the lyrics except for 'Never To Rise Again' which Jim Durkin and Ron Rinehart wrote. In the beginning of the album is the song 'The Death Of Innocence' and this song deals with pedophillia and the heinous crime that it is. A lot of people are really disturbed by the lyrics in this song, because not only is about a relatively taboo subject, but it's also written in the first person from the pedophile's standpoint--somebody who is very sick and very diseased and they know this. They know that they are sick and they are filth and they are scum for doing this to these children, but they cannot control themselves, which is a way alot of pedophiles seem to act. It's like smoking or drinking or over-eating or something, except in a more extreme form. You shouldn't do any of that but you know anyway and this is just taking that sort of psychosis one step further in terms of scarring a young mind, not only a body, but a mind for life. That's what the song deals with. I didn't want to take the standpoint of 'oh, let's kill the pedophile because he's a fag and he molests children'. I didn't want to do that. I just felt the song would have more impact if I wrote about it from the first person. It doesn't mean that I'm a pedophile. Some of the other disturbing lyrics on the album are in the song 'The Promise Of Agony', which is basically an open suicide letter to somebody. A lot of suicide songs or songs that are perceived to be suicide songs like Metallica's 'Fade To Black', you can see so many different things in. I didn't want to pull any punches with this song. These lyrics definitely get right to the point of the protagonist. This night is it and they are going to end it. This song is a celebration of death, really, and 'Leave Scars', which is it's sister song, is a celebration of life. 'Leave Scars' is basically my attitude on my own life and the way I see things. 'Leave Scars' is not about taking a virgin's face and cutting it up or anything. It's just about whether you enter a party or enter somebody's life, make sure that when you are gone your impressions have been made and your scars have been left. No matter where you go, make sure that your presence has been felt. GREED There's other songs, like 'Older Than Time Itself' which is basically kind of a bitch song. A lot of people see this as an anti-yuppie song, but instead of really saying, 'I'm older than all this', I say that all these people are greedy and the three words that will plague us to the end that were released that are older than time itself are AVARICE, GREED, and MALICE. Instead of tying up the song with, 'well, I'm better than all this and you suck cos you're greedy', I pretty much leave it an open-ended song that says, 'look, I'm no better than all these ills I'm speaking about'. If somebody gave me a whole ton of money just to have, not to do anything for, you know, I'd take it. I'm a scumbag, too. 'No One Answers' is a song about an old girlfriend. It's just that when we broke up she kind of annoyed me the way she went about it, so I figured what better way to get back at somebody than to write a song dealing with all your exploits together. I felt basically raped at the end of the relationship and so I was gonna rape her in public so people can see this and laugh at her. So it was something I felt really strong about at the time, and I suppose I still do because she kind of still annoys me." When did you first realise that you were into drums and that you wanted to be a musician and that that is what you wanted to do with your life? GH: "When I first heard KISS in the summer of 1976, which, that's kind of late, as KISS goes, but I was, like seven at the time, and that's when I realized that KISS was it for me and this is exactly what I wanted to do. It took me another 5 or 6 years before I got my first drum kit, but I just learned my rudiments and stuff--and then I got into Rush and Yes and stuff like that, and let me tell you I can play the mean air drums to Rush. I've figured out all Neil Peart's licks and stuff, and that way when I got my first drum kit it wasn't that hard to actually play the thing. By the time I turned 14 I had broken all my kit anyway, so I had to give up playing for about three years. I picked up playing again, basically right before I joined Dark Angel, so I've probably been playing drums for about five years now because I've been in Dark Angel for four years. There was no such thing as heavy metal when I was in high school, because when I was really into underground metal like Raven and Anvil and Venom and stuff, there was no such thing as Quiet Riot or Motley Crue, even. They hadn't really hit het, or brought metal into the forefront. It was strange to see kids into that sort of music, but to see somebody into underground black metal stuff like myself, people just didn't know how to react. It was the typical outcast story. I mean, if you're into heavy metal, you're into hardcore black metal, boy, you were like Satan. I joined Dark Angel and life has been hell ever since." How did your parents react to you getting into this heavy duty music? LONG HAIR GH: "My folks just thought it was a phase. They just thought it was a phase. They just thought that it was something that, 'oh, god, he's bright enough, he'll grow out of this long hair stuff and he'll go to school and, like go to Harvard or something and become a brain surgeon'. That was never my idea. I told my folks from like 1976 on, I told them, 'I will be in a band and I will be touring the country and putting out albums, mom and dad'. I was seven when I was telling them this and they were just going, 'oh, how cute'. I could have either done this or become a baseball player, because I was kind of a jock when I was younger, and I just decided that my hair was more important, so I got more into music and less involved in sports and stuff. My parents now realize that I'm not really going to grow out of this thing, and they're interested enough in the band now that their son is in it, you know? They're at all the shows and my dad wears his Dark Angel shirts and stuff, and that's pretty cool, but, I don't think they'd be into Dark Angel if I wasn't in the band. That's kind of pretty safe to say." What are your tour plans? GH: "Well, we'll be doing the US with Death, and we should be going to Europe in May. We will probably be doing a couple of the festivals. Everything is getting worked out right now, so I don't have any dates or places, but everybody should really keep their eyes open."