Death Angel
Relentless Retribution

"Not for Money, but for Cash"

Do you know what pisses me off the most? It's not the big band that flops an album trying to innovate according to its real inclinations, for example, Opeth who, at least since "Ghost Reveries," hinted that sooner or later an inaccessible (and inaudible) tribute to pure prog rock would arrive, or Morbid Angel who had never hidden their love for techno since the time of the "Covenant" remix and released the arrogant "Illud Divinum Insanus." It's the historic bands that have been around for over twenty years, after inventing a genre, after having churned out at least one masterpiece to pass on to posterity, they slyly flatten themselves in the shadow of the current major, twisting their style and bringing it closer to the new trends of modern metal.

In a nutshell: Death Angel, pioneers of Bay Area thrash, authors of that "The Ultra-Violence" that every thrasher must know by heart, released in 2010 their sixth album "Relentless Retribution," well-packaged and shiny with advertising in industry magazines, under the wing of Nuclear Blast, and they fall disastrously from their throne as thrash princes. The reason is easily said. It must be said first that they replaced both bassist and drummer, and this is certainly a regret, because the new drummer Will Carrol will do everything to make himself hostile to the ears of the unfortunate listeners, who, sure of encountering a collection of razor-sharp metal cuts, will instead find something quite different...

The start is not excessively destabilizing, one might think of a mistaken track, medium tempo with riffs that are ultimately anonymous but supported by a quite imaginative drum and a screaming that gives hope. It will prove to be one of the best tracks. But the ambush of these half-American and half-Filipino traitors is just around the corner: following is a hodgepodge where the more melodic Machine Head (coordinate "The Blackening") meet the less metalcore Trivium (so to speak, "Shogun") and launch into a horrid chorus, to top it off, guests Rodrigo y Gabriela throw in a few minutes of South American acoustic guitar strummings. What do they have to do with this song? Nothing, they've been put there at the end of the track, otherwise, as a separate piece, it would have been systematically skipped.

But there's something good, a handful of songs hold up, "Truce" is as the title suggests, short, concrete, crazy solos, as well as "This Hate" which proves to be the best of the album, with a hardcore attitude reminiscent of the old Anthrax, especially in the vocals, forcing the reviewing Monarch into continuous headbanging. Listened to inattentively, it might not seem all that horrible, but the point is: they are not Death Angel. The remaining tracks waver between botched mid tempos which even feature some breakdowns ("Into The Arms Of Righteous Anger" actually would need Christ to resurrect), the drummer always doing the same trick on the toms, both in "Into The Arms..." and in the two following songs, just a bit faster, lead guitars mostly truly inspired (even in the acoustic "Volcanic") and impatient, finally two gravestones on the honor of Death Angel. The first, "Opponents At Sides," sounds like a Bullet For My Valentine song, there's the typical metalcore riff at the start, you expect a scream in the style of As I Lay Dying or Parkway Drive to start (credibility is by now just a distant memory) but the ghost of the current Machine Head returns, clean vocals for all six minutes, only that more or less from the middle the musicians seem to fall asleep and the listener can do nothing but the same. Lastly, the closing track tells us that Will Carrol, who during the rest of the album except for a few exceptions, seemed like a village cover band drummer due to very poor creativity, is not exactly a novice and his part is demonic and furious... Too bad the rhythmic part of the guitars crosses into bad taste.

The hope is that it is just a momentary lapse, I would not want to find myself in a few years with children adopting the "new" Death Angel as their idols.