Death Angel

Live at The House of Blues

Los Angeles, California

May 4th, 2015

Review and Photos by Travis Baumann

Death Angel is a Thrash Metal band from the San Francisco Bay area. They originally started out in the early Eighties when Thrash was just getting its start and were an influential part of that scene.

Through a number of ups and downs the group had eventually disbanded in 1991 but approximately ten years later there was a reunion of the members to play a benefit for Chuck Billy of Testament when he was battling cancer.

Since that time, the band has put out three albums together, the latest being "The Dream Calls For Blood". Death Angel were performing tonight as the final stop on the North American tour in support of Cavalera Conspiracy.

As the band took to the stage they opened the set with "Left For Dead", the album opener from their latest release. They followed that with "Son of the Morning" as if flows on the album itself.

They jumped back a release for "Claws in so Deep" off of "Relentless Retribution". The lead singer Mark Osegueda, mentioned multiple times throughout the performance that this would be the last time Death Angel got to perform on that stage as the House of Blues is set to close in July of this year.

This is by far my favorite venue to see shows at and with its passing, the famous Sunset Strip will be down to two small venues left to see metal shows at.

They went back to the latest album for "Fallen" and then went to their 2008 album "Killing Season" for the song "Buried Alive".

This was the only song they did off of their first album since reuniting and they only did the one song off of "Relentless Retribution" as well. The majority of the set was dedicated to the latest release.

Mark said the next song was for anyone who had been in an unhappy relationship for a week, a year, ten years, and one day woke up and decided to change it.

He said that people into extreme music went through things in life just like everyone else but we are better equipped to handle it due to its influence in our life.

With that they played "Succubus" and lead straight into "Execution - Don't Save Me", also from the latest album.

Mark took a moment to introduce founding member and lead guitarist, Rob Cavestany. He said for over twenty eight years Death Angel was around due to this guy.

They went way back in time to do "Evil Priest" combined with "Mistress of Pain", both songs coming from their debut album, "The Ultra-Violence". The mosh pit was constantly active during the performance.

The set list moved forward to the latest release for the title track off of "The Dream Calls for Blood". It was a good choice of songs for the night as I love to hear the newer material but they worked in a few old favorites and few off other albums in between.

They would have time to do one more new song with "Caster of Shame" before they went back to the beginning to do the title track off of "The Ultra-Violence".

This old favorite went straight into "Thrown To The Wolves" off of "The Art of Dying" for the final song of the night.

It was a good show to say the least with Mark being very talkative between songs. He said they all love music and felt so privileged to be able to play this type of music for a living for us all.

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