In a new interview with Oran O’Beirne of Ireland’s Overdrive, DARK ANGEL drummer Gene Hoglan spoke about the reunited California thrash metal pioneers’ upcoming first new album in 34 years, “Extinction Level Event”, which is due later in 2025 via Reversed Records. Asked if he ever thought DARK ANGEL would release another full-length record after 1991’s “Time Does Not Heal”, Gene said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “I will be honest: I did not expect DARK ANGEL to ever be returning. And then about a little over a decade or so ago, when the talks came around [about a DARK ANGEL reunion], I had some free time in my schedule, and the talks were coming around, like, ‘Hey, what does everybody think about maybe doing some shows?’ I always got offers. When I’m over in Europe, or anywhere, with STRAPPING YOUNG LAD or TESTAMENT or whoever, all the promoters would come up to me and say, ‘Hey, man, if you ever wanna put DARK ANGEL back together, man, we’re here for it.’ And so I’m, like, ‘Duly noted.’ And then, when the time in the schedule was freed up in order to do so, we reached out and started doing that.
“I’ve mentioned it in a number of interviews where [late DARK ANGEL guitarist] Jim Durkin and myself, we got together and he let me in on a few ideas and songs and riffs and demos and things that he had put together in case DARK ANGEL was ever gonna record ever again,” Gene continued. “And I got so excited with it that I was, like, ‘Oh my God. DARK ANGEL, we’re writing new stuff. We’re gonna record a new record real soon. It’s gonna come out.’ And it took a decade. So, I take full responsibility for blabbing way too early about it. But now we are at the point where the album is complete, and we’ve kept it real cloak and dagger over the years; we’ve been working on it for some time. And we wanted to be able to have it way closer to its ‘releasability’, I suppose, rather than justโฆ ‘Cause I knew it was gonna take us a while to get it started and then completed. I knew that was gonna be a lot of time in between the inception and completion. So we just took our time with getting the album to this point where it’s at, to where we could announce it.”
Hoglan added: “Yes, later this year, in 2025, we’re gonna have a new DARK ANGEL record, unless something goes tragically wrong, but everything’s moving according to plan. So we’re at that point. I’m really excited about the new record. I dig it. I’m really happy with it. We’re all really happy with it. And from every aspect of the album โ the music, the lyrics, the performances. Ron‘s [Rinehart] vocals are crushing on it. The artwork is killer. Myself and my artist, Cain Gillis, we took a lot of time getting this artwork together. It’s a pretty special release, and we’re really excited for it, man. I’m stoked to be able to release it.”
Regarding the musical direction of the new DARK ANGEL material, Gene said: โ”This is gonna be a very DARK ANGEL-esque record. And a lot of people are asking me, like, ‘Hey, is this gonna sound like ‘Darkness Darkness’? Is it gonna sound like ‘Leave Scars’ or ‘Time Does Not Heal’ or ‘We Have Arrived’?’ Which album is it gonna sound like?’ And I’m, like, man, it’s gonna sound like DARK ANGEL. No DARK ANGEL album has ever sounded like another one. So in keeping in that spirit, that mode of evolution, this is an evolution in progress. So this is where DARK ANGEL is gonna sound like DARK ANGEL. But I feel, in my opinion, I know what’s good metal and I also know what’s like kind of generic and just kind of, ‘Oh, man. Nice try, guys.’
“We approached this record’s production in a totally different manner than any production of these days,” Gene revealed. “This is not a gridded, heavily edited and sterile-sounding record. We tried to make this just as lively and just like a band jamming as much as possible. So it will not sound like every other album that is justโฆ There’s no sound replacement on the drums. This is room tones. This is real โ just the way we did it back in the day. It’s real. All we tried to do is we tried to make it sound better than any other DARK ANGEL album. And that’s the only thing I really feel like any band can compare itself to.
“I love all the metal bands โ all the EXODUSes and KREATORs and SODOMs and POSSESSEDs and everybody, but I can’t go listen to their stuff and go, ‘Hey, we’ve gotta compare our stuff to them and make sure that [we sound similar to them].’ I won’t do that,” Hoglan added. “We are DARK ANGEL and we stand on our own. And I will stand behind everything that we ever do, definitely. So, there you go.”
DARK ANGEL has released two new singles so far, “Circular Firing Squad” and the “Extinction Level Event” title track.
The “Extinction Level Event” title track was written by Durkin a decade ago, long before he suffered from severe liver disease, and, to the surprise of everyone, passed away in 2023. It was recorded and mixed at the Armoury Studios in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, executive produced by Hoglan, produced and engineered by Rob Shallcross and mixed by Mike Fraser.
On the topic of the musical direction of the new DARK ANGEL material, Gene told “The David Ellefson Show”: “We just tried to write a kick-ass metal record. We tried to write a kick-ass DARK ANGEL record. For it to sound like any of our other records was not important. We just tried to kind of focus on, like, ‘Hey, what kind of DARK ANGEL record would be coming out if DARK ANGEL never stopped putting out albums this whole time? Where would DARK ANGEL be at right now in 2025?’ And so this pretty much encapsulates where we’re at. It’s a pretty aggressive record. It’s pretty ferocious. I’m really into the record, and I’m into the artwork. I think the artwork is killer. We got great artwork for it. And if people disagree with me, then that is your opinion. Absolutely, you have the freedom to do that. I have the freedom to work this band however we want. We get to do whatever we like with this band. And we tried to make a real ferocious record.”
Durkin died on March 8, 2023 at the age of 58. An original member of DARK ANGEL, Durkin played on the band’s first three albums โ 1985’s “We Have Arrived”, 1986’s “Darkness Descends” and 1989’s “Leave Scars” โ before departing the group in 1989. He was part of DARK ANGEL‘s lineup when the band reformed in 2013, and had been playing with them, on and off, ever since.
Prior to his death, Durkin had been sitting out some of DARK ANGEL‘s gigs. He was replaced at the shows by Hoglan‘s wife Laura Christine, who has since joined DARK ANGEL as a permanent member.
Hoglan told “The David Ellefson Show” that “Extinction Level Event” is “in a lot of ways a huge tribute to Jim Durkin. His style is all over it,” he explained. “Laura Christine, our new guitarist, her style is all over it. She’s becoming the new writing partner. I’ve always written a vast majority of the material, and Laura‘s influence is massive on it. And she writes the coolest riffs I knowโฆ And so there you go there. And we’re just really excited to be able to have a new release to talk about. And I figured the next new big pile of touring cycle is gonna involve this new record. And we’re really excited about it. And we hope people dig it. There you go.”
Earlier in May, Gene told “The Zach Moonshine Show” about the “Extinction Level Event” title track: “About a decade ago or so, when we got back together and we started playing some shows and the vibe was so cool and everybody was just having a great time and we had all kind of grown up into men, as it were, we were just having a great time together, and Jim took me aside one time, he was, like, ‘Hey, man, I have this song that I wrote pretty recently.’ And it was just, like, ‘If we ever get a chance to do any kind of recording with DARK ANGEL or do any kind of DARK ANGEL stuff, this is my most DARK ANGEL-esque song that I’ve got.’ And I was, like, ‘Hey, man, lay it on me.’ And I was just so blown away by it. It was just so killer, so catchy, so Jim Durkin-like. So that song there, as well as another one that he had in the works, just got me so pumped that I just happened to do an interview pretty recently after that, and I was, like, ‘Yeah, man. We’re gonna record a new record. Yeah, it’s gonna be coming really soon.’ And like I said, it’s taken over a decade. But here we are, and our first track, ‘Extinction Level Event’, is out there.”
As for why “Extinction Level Event” was chosen to be the first single from the upcoming LP, Gene said: “All the tracks on the album, any one of them could have been our first release, but this is one of the moreโฆ well, we have a lot of savagely blistering tracks on this record. This is one of them, and it was just so kick-ass DARK ANGEL, such a DARK ANGEL-type song that we didn’t release this first one because Jim wrote it and this was kind of his last, final entire song that he left with us. It just kind of worked out that way. It’s, like, this is a really kick-ass track and it’s got a cool title and all the artwork that goes along with the album goes along with this. So there you go.”
The “Extinction Level Event” artwork and layout was designed by Cain Gillis, with concepts by Hoglan.
DARK ANGEL was originally scheduled to play new music for the first time since 1991 during its January 29 concert at the Whisky A Go Go in West Hollywood, California. However, that show ended up getting postponed due to the wildfires in the state.
In July 2024, DARK ANGEL officially entered the studio to begin recording its new LP. Two months earlier, Hoglan was asked by Rocking With Jam Man what it has been like making new DARK ANGEL music more than 30 years after the release of the band’s last album, 1991’s “Time Does Not Heal”. Gene responded: “Well, that’s one thing. It’s like we had a choice. I had an entire DARK ANGEL album written that was ready to start getting recorded after the ‘Time Does Not Heal’ record, and circumstances occurred where the band just had to dissolve. So, I had a bunch of material written. And when Jim Durkin and myself โ Jim is no longer with us, but when we put DARK ANGEL back together and we started talking about, like, ‘What do we wanna do for the future? Do we wanna write some new material?’ And ‘I’ve got some ideas, Gene, and you probably have some ideas.’ And I have a number of songs that I sent to Jim. And when Jim heard that โ I sent it to him on a CD โ he freaked out and he was, like, ‘My God, here’s our new album. This is gonna be our next record. Hell yeah.’ And he got really excited about that material. But I was, like, ‘Hey, Jim, tell you what. I feel really strongly about my writing chops, and the songs I’m hearing from you right now are crushing. So how about we just write new stuff, get together and start writing new material?’ And so we kind of went that route.”
He continued: “For my elements of what I wanted DARK ANGEL to sound like, Jim Durkin is a huge influence on my writing style. So I wanted this to have a lot of the Jim Durkin influence on it. In terms of riffs, there’s not as many from Jim as we were hoping for, but Jim‘s entire presence is all over the new DARK ANGEL material that I’ve been working on. And he’s a huge guitar influence on me, as well as a lot of people. So, there’s definitely gonna be a pretty hardy Jim Durkin influence. So what I’ve tried to do is not go back 35 years or 37 years or whatever, ‘Darkness Descends’ or even ‘We Have Arrived’, those early albums, or ‘Leave Scars’ or ‘Time Does Not Heal’, I’ve not tried to duplicate anything from any of those albums, but I tried to put myself in the mindset of what if DARK ANGEL just kept writing albums for the last 30-whatever years, 32, 33 years, where would we be at now? And so that has been my approach on the new DARK ANGEL material.”
DARK ANGEL released two albums with Don Doty on vocals โ the aforementioned “We Have Arrived” and “Darkness Descends” โ 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 โ “Leave Scars” and “Time Does Not Heal” โ before calling it quits in 1992.
Photo by Alex Solca
