Vocalist Mark Osegueda of San Francisco Bay Area metallers DEATH ANGEL has released the following statement:
"It's with a heavy heart I have to inform you that the rumors you are hearing are unfortunately true... although there is a platinum lining to this black cloud of DEATH ANGEL's 2014 summer festival season.
"The platinum lining is that we are very proud to announce is DEATH ANGEL WILL be playing Hellfest [in France] this year! Hellfest will have the exclusive European DEATH ANGEL show this summer! However, our billing on that festival has been updated. We will now be playing on Sunday, June 22! (The BLACK SABBATH day!) On main stage #1 in place of MEGADETH who unfortunately had to cancel… and we plan to give that slot on the bill, and you metal fans the damage it deserves!
"The dark cloud, I must announce, is the rest of our summer festival has been canceled... and canceled by us.
"I assure you this has NOTHING to do with the structure or strength of the band itself! We feel the band is at its live performing peak riding on the wave of our latest album, 'The Dream Calls for Blood'! It boils down to the infrastructure of the business side of this band… Certain aspects of how this band was being handled were no longer matching up to the quality level of product we are releasing, and the live shows we've been unleashing! And if we carried on that way any longer, it would have damaged the core of what is us, and that is the band! So we are taking this time to restructure our business team to make DEATH ANGEL the strongest band that we can possibly be from the outside to the core!
"The lineup is intact! The hunger is voracious! And we will be back in Europe with a full-blown tour when we feel confident that we have the full arsenal, and team behind us that this band, and its music, and, most of all, you fans, deserve!
"We are doing all we can to expedite this process!
"I know some of you will not understand this aspect of the art form known as music! But it is a business. And hasty business choices in this art has brought down bigger than us.... And we have NO intentions of being brought down!
"Some of you will have negative comments and thoughts... But believe me, no one is more saddened and disappointed about these cancellations than us... And if you have ever seen us live, I'm sure you can attest to our love for being on stage!
That being said, we'll see you at Hellfest. And we plan on giving you a performance that night that will convince the naysayers that DEATH ANGEL is here to stay and a force to be reckoned with."
DEATH ANGEL's seventh album, "The Dream Calls For Blood", sold 5,400 copies in the United States in its first week of release to land at position No. 72 on The Billboard 200 chart.
DEATH ANGEL's previous CD, "Relentless Retribution", opened with 2,700 units in September 2010. The band's 2008 effort, "Killing Season", registered a first-week tally of around 2,300. This number was in line with the performance of its predecessor, "The Art of Dying", which premiered with around 2,100 copies back in May 2004.
Released on October 11, 2013 in Europe (except for the U.K. where it arrived three days later) and October 15, 2013 in North America via Nuclear Blast Records, "The Dream Calls For Blood" was recorded at Audiohammer Studios in Sanford, Florida with producer Jason Suecof (TRIVIUM, AUGUST BURNS RED, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, ALL THAT REMAINS, WHITECHAPEL, DEVILDRIVER), and once again features cover art by Brent Elliot White (JOB FOR A COWBOY, CARNIFEX, WHITECHAPEL).
Greg Prato of Songfacts recently conducted an interview with legendary guitarist Michael Schenker. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.
Songfacts: How do you find that you write your best songs?
Michael: I just do it the same way over and over. I love to play. I play and discover on a regular basis, so when I bump into a great piece of something that I think, "Wow, I should capture that" — and it's usually just 5 seconds, 10 seconds long — I'll put it on the cassette recorder in its raw form and I'll just leave it there. When it's time to make a new record, I listen to what I have selected, and then that inspires me to write the additional parts to it. So I never really know what the song is going to be until the album's finished. On this album in particular, I was looking for more of a balance: Not too many mid tempos, but enough fast songs and many different elements in it that keep it going and keep it interesting. It's like putting a puzzle together and never really knowing what comes out at the end.
Songfacts: How did the songwriting work in the band UFO? Was it more of a collaboration?
Michael: Well, when I joined UFO, they were a psychedelic band. They were playing very different music. But I was attracted to them being British, since that's where the music that I fell in love with came from: [LED] ZEPPELIN, BLACK SABBATH and Johnny Winter. Well, Johnny Winter was American, but a lot of the music that we were listening to at that point in time when I was 15 years old was coming from there. When I toured with UFO and SCORPIONS, the guitarist from UFO lost his passport, so in order to continue the tour, I had to play for both bands. That was when I was 16 years old. I opened up with the Scorpions and then I played with UFO for a couple of days. And that's when they asked me to join them. I always told the SCORPIONS that if a British band would ever ask me, I would go just to get to a country where there was the interest for rock and roll. In Germany, it was dead. It was disco music and it wasn't very interesting what I was doing. So I was more than happy to go over there. They invited me over and I took the offer. When I got there I just laid down a riff and another one and another one, and Phil [Mogg] did his vocals to it and it just became a totally different band based on the pieces that I gave them, which every song was built on. I wrote that way right from the beginning, and it's still how I write today. But because I had just joined them, we were more in the mode of making a record, touring, making a record, touring, making a record, touring. Because we were doing everything in the short amount of time, we spent a lot of time at the rehearsal studio. Some very early songs, like "Rock Bottom", were very spontaneous. We were just sitting there looking for an additional song, and when I played "Rock Bottom", the riff, that's when Phil jumped up and said, "That's it! That's it!" So we started putting it together and putting it into form. But in general, I would always come up with some riffs, give it to the singer and he would find something, too. Then we'd go into the rehearsal studio and work on it. That's basically how we used to write.
Songfacts: How close did you come to joining Ozzy Osbourne's band after Randy Rhoads' death?
Michael: That was around '81. Graham Bonnet just came over and we started writing and doing things, and then I get a phone call in the middle of the night from a very devastated Ozzy Osbourne telling me what happened [Rhoads was killed in an airplane accident, on March 19, 1982]. I said, "Okay, it's the middle of the night. I'll let you know, but I have to speak to Peter Mensch" and so on. And then I had to look... I was tempted to do that, but at the same time I was in the middle of doing "Assault Attack" and it was going to be the second album with Cozy Powell. We were getting ready, and I had to look at my situation. Then I heard some crazy stories about Ozzy dragging people across the stage by their hair and stuff like that. And then some other horror stories that didn't sound too good. I was tempted to do that, but something tells me, you know what, Michael, first of all, the SCORPIONS, my own brother, he asked me to play, to help the SCORPIONS and to join them and tour with them. And I couldn't do it because I'm not made for copying people. I love to invent things, to express myself, and so my vision is a different vision. Sometimes you have to battle a little bit with your true vision and temptation. Same with AEROSMITH: It was a good thing it didn't work out, because again, I would have not enjoyed myself. I know that. At the end of the day, I said, "I can't do that." It came to the point when I stretched it for so long that I think Cozy Powell took it over and told them, "He's not going to do it." And that was that. It was a very strange situation.
Read the entire interview a
