California thrash metal legends Dark Angel recently returned with Extinction Level Event, their first new album in 34 years, released on September 5 via Reversed Records. In a new conversation with the Brutally Delicious podcast, drummer Gene Hoglan opened up about the fan response, the decision to keep the record off streaming platforms (for now), and why the band insisted on recording the old-school way.
"So far people seem to be digging it," Hoglan said of the initial reception. "That's all we ever wanted. It's available on reversedrecords.com right at the moment, and we've been trying to get everybody to get our version of it before we ever send it to a streaming service or anything like that. Just because Spotify doesn't sound good. At the moment it's available directly through us only."
As for whether Extinction Level Event will ever arrive on streaming services, Hoglan explained the band's cautious approach: "At some point possibly, but right now I tell you, my management has been guiding me in the direction of what's been happening with a lot of the streaming services. And a lot of them right at the moment are currently just amending their terms of service. And it is even worse for the artists. So we're just gonna kind of wait it out a little bit."
While some might worry about visibility, Hoglan sees things differently: "For true Dark Angel fans, they'll know to go to Reversed, and the album is selling through Reversed, which is fortunate. But as long as people get to hear it, that's all I care about. 'Cause you never make a ton of money at this, but we just want people to be able to hear it, check it out, hear it in its true form as well.
"'Cause we put a lot of work into it and we produced it in a way that's kind of uncommon these days — just having live playing, real amps, real guitars. There was nobody sitting in front of a station at home in their basement with their little Pro Tools. No, we did it all live — real mics, real performances, nothing gridded or no A.I. put to vocals."
The thrash veteran was quick to call out the sterile nature of modern quantized productions: "Everything is these days. All I know is that we didn't want to sound sterile or processed where everything's just kind of that even plane with not a lot of life to it. There's a ton of life to the production on the new record. So that's really exciting."
Hoglan credited producer Rob Shallcross for steering the band through the challenging process: "It is very arduous to produce an album the way that we just did. It's a challenge, and we did face our challenges. And our producer, Rob Shallcross, he was very vehement and adamant in sticking to the plan… But in the end, he's correct and the production came out killer. I love the album, man. There's a lot of just great vibes around the sonicness of it, the tones and the sounds."
Ultimately, Hoglan is confident the effort paid off: "We're excited about the songs, the production, the music, the lyrics, the vocals, the artwork, the leads, the drums. Everything came out really killer on it. So we're really excited."
