DEATH ANGEL's Mark Osegueda Reminisces About Band History; His Original Departure

October 12, 2011, 12 years ago

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DEATH ANGEL singer Mark Osegueda spoke with Ruben Mosqueda from Oregon Music News recently about the band's legendary history. A few excerpts follow:

Oregon Music News: How was it for you guys to have the 'Bored' video on MTV with videos from MEGADETH, ANTHRAX, and EXODUS.

Osegueda: "It was extremely exciting for us. I remember we were waiting to hear from MTV when the 'Bored' video was going to air and our management called and said, 'They’re playing it tonight!' I remember it vividly like it was yesterday. We shot a video for the debut album, The Ultra-Violence, for the song 'Voracious Souls' that was supposed to air on MTV but never made it due to a lyric. It aired on Much Music in Canada and got airplay in Europe. So when 'Bored' got played it was really, really exciting for us."

Oregon Music News: How much say did you had in the direction of Act III?

Osegueda: "Geffen pumped a lot of money into that project. It was our first major-label record; we had a lot of say in it but so did Geffen. Originally we wrote about ten songs for the album we said, 'we’re ready to record.' They wanted to listen to what we had and they said, 'No, no, no. You need to do some more writing.' We went back and wrote another five songs and brought them back to them and they kept pushing us. We did get frustrated with Geffen, but in the end we must have written something like 30 songs during those sessions. I think by Geffen pushing us like that we came up with an incredible album that we’re very proud of to this day. It was due to the budget that they gave us that we were able to move up from a Davy Vain to a Max Norman. We grew up listening to (OZZY OSBOURNE's) Blizzard Of Ozz and Diary of a Madman, so to get a guy like Max was incredible. Working with Max was phenomenal. He has a great ear and as you know, is an amazing producer. Max was able to bring out the best in all of us. Working with Max was the first time we were pushed in the studio.

Oregon Music News: The year after, in 1991, Death Angel broke up. What lead up to this?

Osegueda: "We started off so very young . We garnered a lot of attention which lead to us being signed to Enigma Records and then Geffen Records. We didn’t have a lot of experience; we found our attorney in the yellow pages. We looked in the yellow pages and saw a guy that was an entertainment attorney and we said, 'That’s our guys!' (laughs). We didn’t know any better at that point. In short, we signed a bunch of bunk deals. It’s not a bunk deal if you’re the label. We signed a lot of bad deals and that haunted us for the first part of our career. When it came time to generating decent money, we weren’t seeing any of it. All that money was going to litigation; that ate at the band from the inside out. It was hard, we were packing venues while on tour, generating good money, but when we’d come home from the road we were living with our parents. Nothing added up. It ate at the core of the band. At the height of our rise we had a bus accident. For me, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I went up to the guys in the band and I said, 'I’m out.' The guys decided that they wanted to continue without me and they formed The Organization. It was a departure from Death Angel but they did that for a while.

Read the entire interview here.



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