It would seem that tenacity is one of Thrash Metal’s secret weapons. Amongst the plethora of solo’s, screaming vocals and that trademark breakneck speed these guys are kickin’ it old school. Releasing a brand new DVD Live CD combo Death Angel are merely just one of the bands that have been going since the eighties and are arguably stronger than ever! Chronicling the band’s rise to fame, along with the decision to call it quits right up to their reformation and The Dream Calls For Blood the documentary is a fascinating fly on the wall look into the life of Death Angel. Able to speak to us Ted Aguilar kindly put away some time to chat about the brand new DVD/CD combo, what we can expect from the band later this year and that all important brand new record…
What can you tell us about the new releases both a Thrashumentary and The Bay Calls For Blood?
Well A Thrashumentary, is a great story of the band from the inception all the way until now. You get to see how the band formed, footages from the eighties photos and just basically the history of the band. You know from from the eighties, then it jumps into when the band reformed and up until now. It’s two plus hours long? You get a good story of the originals and the line up today so I think that people are really going to dig it. Especially the old school hardcore Death Angel fans, you know people who are discovering Death Angel like recently are really gonna enjoy the film.
The live album, that comes along with it, The Bay Calls For Blood, that’s taken from a live show that we did in San Francisco we did last December, one of our Christmas shows and you know it came out really good that we thought why not throw that in the DVD. You know give a little bonus for the fans.
Oh cool! So do they come as a dual release or is it two individual ones that come out at the same time?
The Bay Calls For Blood, it’s an added thing with The Thrashumentary but we’re also releasing The Bay Calls For Blood on vinyl as well.
Oh wow! That’ll be cool. So I’ve a couple of trailers for the Thrashumentary and it seems that we’ve got a couple of Thrash legends speaking. Are there many other cameo’s that speak about the Thrash scene?
There’s a few cameo’s in there you know, people will be surprised, there are a lot of cameo’s in our DVD. I mean I was surprised as well haha!
How was it? You guys surely must be quite good friends with a lot of them, was it kind of nice to revisit your friends and stuff like that?
Yeah! Some of them we toured with, so it was easier to get them on film and some of them we got those when our director Tommy Jones, who did the whole DVD. He got some of them while he was on tour with another band. Whilst we were on tour somewhere else. It was a combination, he helped us out by getting interviews from other bands and the stuff with Chuck Billy and Gary Holt we were actually on tour with them, it was easier to get those.
What was it like revisiting that kind of era of Death Angel’s inception. Did it make you nostalgic at all?
A little bit, it made me feel like “Wow, those were good times” but I don’t wanna live in the past, really. It was good to look back on it, to see how it all came about. How the band started, seeing all the footage, seeing just that moment in time. Yeah, it made me feel nostalgic for a little bit. Then it gets into today and it just makes you feel like, wow the band’s survived this long…
As ever, this is merely an excerpt of our interview with Ted, listen to the full thing below on our Soundcloud account . Where you can find interviews featuring, Symphony X, Exodus, Ol Drake, Carach Angren, Between The Buried And Me and so many more.
Death Angel’s A Thrashumentary is out now via Nuclear Blast.
