Dark Angel

Dark Angel is an American thrash metal band from Los Angeles, California, founded in 1981.
The band started under the name Shellshock but changed to Dark Angel in 1983. Their over-the-top style (extremely fast, heavy, long songs with many tempo changes) earned them the nickname “the L.A. Caffeine Machine” and the motto “too fast, my ass”.
Drummer Gene Hoglan is considered among the best underground metal drummers in the world.
After releasing four full-length albums and touring throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, Dark Angel disbanded in 1992 but decided to reform ten years later. However, vocal problems with Ron Rinehart forced them to cancel touring plans.

After a 10-year pause, Dark Angel reformed in 2002 with a new lineup featuring Ron Rinehart on vocals, Eric Meyer on guitar, Danyael Williams on bass and Gene Hoglan on drums.

During the reunion, Dark Angel performed the Metallica song “Creeping Death”, which appeared on the 2004 Metallica tribute album “Metallic Attack: Metallica – The Ultimate Tribute”.

In 2005, Rinehart began to suffer from health problems and had an accident that year, which caused a severe spinal injury so severe that, if Rinehart continued singing, it could result in the inability to speak, thus ending the Dark Angel reunion.

2013, the band announced another reunion and a possible tour in the USA.

On November 1, 2014, it was announced that Dark Angel was working on new material.

On April 5, 2016, it was announced that Dark Angel would celebrate their 30th anniversary by playing a show on October 8 at the Vogue Theatre in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. At that show, they were supposed to play the “Darkness Descend” album and songs from their 1991 album  “Time does not heal”. The concert was cancelled “due to circumstances beyond [the band’s] control.”

By November 2017, the band was still writing their forthcoming new album, according to Gene Hoglan. When asked in October 2018 by The Aquarian Weekly about the status of the album, Rinehart stated, “You know, I honestly feel this, if all of us could get in the same place for a certain amount of time. It would be easy to do. That said, it’s hard to get the world’s greatest drummer who travels with everybody, Gonz in New Mexico and me here in Washington. We have a lot of great ideas and awesome riffs. Every time I hear a new riff I get super excited. I would rather wait for something amazing than rush and have something be crap.

In a February 2019 interview with Agoraphobic News, Hoglan stated that Dark Angel had “5 or 6 songs on the go” and that their new album would be released “by the end of this year or by 2020. The album’s release date was later pushed back to 2021. During his appearance on Death Angel guitarist Ted Aguilar’s Alive & Streaming internet show in August 2020, Hoglan revealed that the band was still “attempting to write” their new album. He again reiterated the album’s slow progress in September 2021. In a January 2022 stream on Twitch, shortly after writing a new Dark Angel song and departing from Testament, Hoglan revealed that the band was “moving forward” with writing a new album and intended “to be in the studio before the end of this year.”
In an interview done in August 2022, Hoglan said the album was likely to be released in the middle of 2023.

Studio albums
We Have Arrived (1985)
Darkness Descends (1986)
Leave Scars (1989)
Time Does Not Heal (1991)
Live albums
Live Scars (1990)

Compilation albums
Decade of Chaos: The Best of Dark Angel (1992)

Demos
Gonna Burn (1983)
Demo II (1983)
Live Demo (1984)
Live Demo from Berkeley (1985)
Atrocity Exhibition (1992)

Singles
“Merciless Death” (1985)
“Act of Contrition” (1991)