BW&BK; recently caught up with DEATH ANGEL vocalist Mark Osegueda and guitarist Rob Cavestany to discuss the band's new album, Killing Season. The following is an excerpt from the interview:

Killing Season is a very different animal compared to The Art Of Dying. The guys are constantly using words like “dark”, “aggressive” and “fucking heavy” to describe it – not that the last album wasn’t – but there’s a punk-ish attitude adjustment that’s taken place along the way. There’s also an urgency to the new songs that make even the heaviest tracks on The Art Of Dying sound tame.

Osegueda: “That was inevitable because we always listen to Discharge, Cro-Mags, all the really grinding straight-ahead punk with that ‘fuck the world’ attitude. I think we touched on that with the last album in places, but we really honed it on Killing Season and the album reflects a lot of the older stuff we dig, like Ride The Lightning and albums from that era."

Cavestany: “We were able to inject more attitude into the songs because we had more confidence. That’s what it boiled down to, with all of us thinking the same way and talking about the album we wanted to make as a whole rather than just writing song after song. That’s how The Art Of Dying was made, and it worked for that album, but we didn’t want to do that again. Killing Season has a different feel, a different approach, and it feels more aggressive and serious. There were elements on the new album that were planned and that’s what we focused on. We achieved what we set out to do, and I’m elated because things don’t always turn out the way you envision them.”

“We know the odds are stacked against you the older you get in this business,” Cavestany adds. “You start off raw and crazy, then you become refined and find yourself for the next couple albums and kick ass, a little bit later you start fucking losing it – softening up, experimenting or just losing the drive – and that’s pretty much the norm for everyone. We decided to be the freaks that defy all odds and make our heaviest and best album of our career this late in our lives.”

Watch for the complete story in BW&BK; #109.