Death Angel - Humanicide

It’s about time we got some big name thrash up in here again; 2019 has felt rather thrash deficient, and Death Angel are here to try to fix it. Daly City’s Death Angel have been enjoying a vibrant, revitalized second take on their thrash metal career after following in thrash metal’s and whooshing away in the 90’s, coming back after its usurper began to fade out in the mid 2000’s. The band have been pumping out classic, gritty thrash metal with all the right production updates to accentuate its strengths, but the band made a significantly big statement back in 2016 with their previous album, The Evil Divide, an album the found them diversifying their track listing and reaching more ears than they were used to.

I had talked about bands I thought I liked more than I actually realize I do when I discussed the refreshingly crunchy Pelican album earlier this week, and I think that syndrome is more applicable to my thoughts of adoration for Death Angel. I’ve always rooted for Death Angel, but probably because I’ve always rooted for thrash to do well in this death-metal-saturated era (not out of distaste for death metal) and I’ve wanted the genre’s representatives to represent it well. And Death Angel certainly don’t embarrass themselves or thrash metal as a whole on this album the way Anvil did last year.

I can certainly give them credit for at least maintaining a consistently above average output, but I still feel like they could be doing so much more to spice up their own sound and the genre than what they have been doing. The band continue to display smart compositional instinct and technical proficiency in their field and singer Mark Osegueda has kept his snarling voice capable of sustaining soaring melodies to give them that extra push.

But Humanicide is unfortunately such a standard and predictable album from Death Angel, which means it certainly gets the job done, but it still just feels like the band has retreated into their comfort zone when they really have no reason to be nervous to step outside and flex their full musical capacity.

It feels like an unnecessary religious adherence to carrying the torch of the thrash metal of their bay area homeland in the most traditional way possible, which is a choice I of course can’t force them to rescind, and I honestly don’t mind the results either. Personally though, I can’t really get into this album all that much because of how safe and in a rut it comes across. And I have definitely, repeatedly, tried, but it has only felt like another round of squandered potential from Death Angel.

I must also say the album finishes on probably the most flacid final three songs of any Death Angel album to date, as though it runs out of motivation itself, tired of churning out the same old same old.

Death Angel at least give us a passable offering to hold us over, but honestly, I do hope for more from them in the future. They have the capacity to do make a great modern thrash album, and I would even line them up next to favorites like Power Trip and Havok as being one of the most poised groups to make a 2020’s thrash classic. But they really need to give themselves a good kick in the ass to light that fire of ambition that they’ll need to do so, because they’ll need to actually use their full potential to reach that level. I know they can do it, it’s just a matter of them buckling down and challenging themselves to do it.

Usain Bolt jogging with his dad/10