In a new interview with the Brutally Delicious podcast, drummer Gene Hoglan of California thrash metal pioneers DARK ANGEL spoke about the band’s first new album in 34 years, “Extinction Level Event”, which was made available digitally on September 5 via Reversed Records. Regarding the fan response to the LP, Gene said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): “Well, so far people seem to be digging it. That’s all we ever wanted. It’s available on reversedrecords.com right at the moment, and we’ve been trying to get everybody to get our version of it before we ever send it to a streaming service or anything like that. Just because Spotify doesn’t sound good. [At the moment it’s available directly] through us only. So you’ve gotta go to reversedrecords.com to grab it.”
Regarding whether “Extinction Level Event” will eventually be made available via all the streaming music services, Gene said: “At some point possibly, but right now I tell you, my management has been guiding me in the direction of what’s been happening with a lot of the, the streaming services. And a lot of them right at the moment are currently just amending their terms of service. And it is even worse for the artists. So we’re just gonna kind of wait it out a little bit.”
Asked if he was concerned that not making “Extinction Level Event” available on the streaming music services would limit the LP’s visibility, Hoglan said: “Well, it is what it is. And so we’re just trying to think in the long term right at the moment. So, for true DARK ANGEL fans, they’ll know to go to Reversed, and the album is selling through Reversed, which is fortunate. But as long as people get to hear it, that’s all I care about. ‘Cause you never make a ton of money at this, but we just want people to be able to hear it, check it out, hear it in its true form as well. ‘Cause we put a lot of work into it and we produced it in a way that’s kind of uncommon these days — just having live playing, real amps, real guitars. There was nobody sitting in front of a station at home in their basement with their little Pro Tools. No, we did it all live — real mics, real performances, nothing gridded or no A.I. put to vocals.”
After the interviewer noted that listeners can tell when recorded music been quantized, Gene concurred. “Oh, God, yeah,” he said. “Everything is these days. All I know is that we didn’t want to sound sterile or processed where everything’s just kind of that even plane with not a lot of life to it. There’s a ton of life to the production on the new record. So that’s really exciting. So, we’re excited to be able to put that part forward for folks. And I’m not saying we’re gonna start a trend or anything, ’cause it is very arduous to produce an album the way that we just did. It’s a challenge, and we did face our challenges. And our producer, Rob Shallcross, he was very vehement and adamant in sticking to the plan… But in the end, he’s correct and the production came out killer. I love the album, man. There’s a lot of just great vibes around the sonicness of it, the tones and the sounds. So, check it out the way we want you to hear it, reversedrecords.com. And we’re excited about the songs, the production, the music, the lyrics, the vocals, the artwork, the leads, the drums. Everything came out really killer on it. So we’re really excited.”
This past June, DARK ANGEL released “Circular Firing Squad”, the second single from “Extinction Level Event”. The LP’s first single, the “Extinction Level Event” title track, was written by DARK ANGEL guitarist Jim 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 DARK ANGEL drummer Gene Hoglan, produced and engineered by Rob Shallcross and mixed by Mike Fraser.
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 — 1985’s “We Have Arrived”, “Darkness Descends” and 1989’s “Leave Scars” — 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.
The “Extinction Level Event” artwork and layout was designed by Cain Gillis, with concepts by Hoglan.
“Musically, lyrically, and vocally, I’m so stoked about this album,” Hoglan previously said. “I’m really excited about DARK ANGEL right now, and everyone who’s heard the new album is losing their minds. Every time I’d finish a song and send it over to the guys, everybody was, ‘Gene, this is my favorite song!’ ‘No, this is my favorite song!!’ ‘Dude, this is totally my favorite song!!!’ That’s never a bad sign.”
Hoglan and Christine wrote everything except for the title track on “Extinction Level Event”. Other songs appearing on the effort include “Atavistic”, which is described as “a full-on three-minute thrash metal barrage”, “Woke Up To Blood”, the title of which stemmed from a dog attack, and “Terror Construct”, which Gene wrote about the way the media and corporations team up to spread fear among the masses so they can continue to fill their pockets.
The seeds of “Extinction Level Event” were planted in late 2013 between the time when TESTAMENT stopped touring to work on their new record and Hoglan was scheduled to work on his next major project. After the first batch of writing sessions for “Extinction Level Event”, Hoglan had to put writing for DARK ANGEL on hold until late 2022. With other obligations behind him, Gene laser-focused on DARK ANGEL, listening back to the jams he and Durkin made earlier, and writing more than 10 new songs over the next three months. With a full album of pummeling new songs, Hoglan flew to Vancouver to track the album at the Armory. There, he and his bandmates worked with Rob Shallcross and Mike Fraser, and over a few sessions, DARK ANGEL had recorded everything but the vocals.
Having passed away two years ago, Durkin‘s sudden death is still traumatic for DARK ANGEL and especially Hoglan. At the same time, he takes bittersweet pride in knowing that Jim‘s playing and performances live on through him and DARK ANGEL, not only when the band plays his old riffs, but also in the continued influence Durkin has on the band’s new songs.
“One of the last things I told him was, ‘Jim, dude, you’re my original guitar hero,” Hoglan recalled. “‘My entire guitar style is based on your style because you are who I really learned how to play guitar from.’ So, my guitar approach with DARK ANGEL is Jim Durkin‘s approach. When I write for the band, I’m thinking, ‘What would Jim do here?’ That’s why his presence is massively all over this new record. Every single song. I wanted to make it to where people are like, ‘Yeah, Jim wrote that riff. Oh, there’s another Jim riff’ because Jim wrote all the best riffs in the band, forever.”
DARK ANGEL released two albums with Don Doty on vocals — the aforementioned “We Have Arrived” and “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 — “Leave Scars” and “Time Does Not Heal” — before calling it quits in 1992.
In a recent interview with San Antonio Current, Hoglan stated about his songwriting approach for “Extinction Level Event”: “Really, the best way to move forward with a new set of DARK ANGEL material would be to acknowledge those earlier eras, of course. They’re very important parts of the DARK ANGEL legacy. But anybody who knows DARK ANGEL — who’s familiar with our trajectory — also will be very cognizant of the fact that we’ve never repeated ourselves on record. The first album, ‘We Have Arrived’, did not sound like ‘Darkness Descends’, and ‘Darkness’ didn’t sound like ‘Leave Scars’ and ‘Time Does Not Heal’. So, anybody who considers themselves a DARK ANGEL fan, they will be well aware of the evolutionary process of DARK ANGEL, the non-repeating of sounds and approaches. So, ultimately, I just kind of felt, ‘Well, hey, what if we were to just take the approach of what if DARK ANGEL just kept putting out records throughout this entire 30-plus-year period. Where would the band be right now?’ And that was kind of the most appealing approach.
“I’m not going to try to replicate ‘Darkness Descends’, or ‘Time Does Not Heal’ or ‘Leave Scars’ or ‘We Have Arrived’, for that matter,” he clarified. “But, writing from here and now, this is very, very DARK ANGEL — what it’s like to write as a DARK ANGEL of our current abilities and mindsets and approaches. So, that was the best way of moving forward with writing new material — for me anyway. That made it really, really exciting.”