Home Read Classic Album Review: Death Angel | Archives & Artifacts

Classic Album Review: Death Angel | Archives & Artifacts

This came out in 2005 – or at least that’s when I got it. Here’s what I said about it back then (with some minor editing):

 


Unless you happen to be a greying metalhead like me, you’re probably asking yourself two questions right about now: Who the %$#@ are Death Angel and why the %$#@ do they deserve a box set?

Well, the answers are simple, really. Death Angel are perhaps the best old-school thrash outfit most people have never heard. Formed in 1982 by a quintet of teenage Filipino cousins from San Francisco, they trafficked in an insanely complex, finger-blisteringly fast brand of metal that served as the missing musical link between the goofball speed-demon anthems of Anthrax and the dark-hearted epics of Metallica. They put out a trio of vastly underappreciated discs between 1987 and ’90 before various forces — speed-metal’s declining popularity, internal squabbles, record company hassles and the aftermath of a serious tour bus crash in 1990 — put the final nail in their coffin. At least temporarily — most of the band (still only in their mid-30s) reunited a few years back and picked up where they left off with the new album Art of Dying.

With a new future ahead of them, a look backward only makes sense. That’s where Archives & Artifacts comes in. This four-disc set includes their first two long-out-of-print indie albums — 1987’s fierce debut The Ultraviolence and 1988’s slightly more refined Frolic Through the Park — along with bonus tracks, (including early demos produced by Kirk Hammett), a disc of basement-tape rarities and a DVD of videos and interview footage.

All of it is outstanding — although the set is far from perfect. I can understand why there are no tracks from their 1990 magnum opus Act III or their live disc Fall From Grace, since they were issued by another label. But I can’t understand why there’s no book in this package. Surely any band that deserves a box set as much as Death Angel also deserves a decent biography.

No wonder kids today don’t know who the %$#@ they are.