Drummer Gene Hoglan was interviewed by Rock Hard Greece to discuss Dark Angel’s only club show in Europe in Athens on July 11, the making of their landmark 1986 album Darkness Descends, and updates about a new album.

Hoglan was asked about the decision for Dark Angel to rerecord the track “Merciless Death” from their 1985 debut We Have Arrived on Darkness Descends. Hoglan remembers, “Well, that was Jim [Durkin, guitarist]'s idea. He said ‘We've become such a different band since We Have Arrived, so I wanted to bridge that gap between that approach and the other.’ I was okay with that too. They basically wanted to rerecord the whole album when I came in, but at the time it was out. And they talked to different companies about it and they said ‘but we just printed this!’ And there was no money back then, in a ‘get a few more thousand dollars to rerecord the drums’ phase. It didn't work like that at all. So Jim said 'since we're not going to rerecord the record, let's rerecord one track and pick the most awesome of them. I'm thinking 'Merciless Death' because that's my favorite track on the record, what do you say Gene?’ It happened, why not? 

“We also recorded a version of ‘War Pigs’. I remember I had two days for the drums. And I recorded the whole album in one day, minus ‘Black Prophecies’. So the second day, I came in, I recorded ‘Black Prophecies’ and they said ‘you know, man, we've got two full days for this and you already nailed ‘Black Prophecies’ in an hour. Let's record something else!’ And I recorded ‘War Pigs’ because we were jamming it in rehearsals and having a great time. Because I always said Dark Angel were like Black Sabbath at 78 turns. For those who remember, you went from 33 1/3 to 45 and then to 78 turns. So we did a version of ‘War Pigs’, however, I recorded it by myself, without any guitar playing. And I forgot to go back for the third verse and ‘cut’ it by mistake! Back then I wasn't used to recording without a guitar playing. Now, I can do it all day, no problem! But then, I got a little lost. And we didn't find out until the guitarists came to record their parts and they said ‘dude, you left out the third verse!’ Again, before ProTools, you couldn't cut and sew and say ‘at least we got a piece out of this’, so ‘War Pigs’ didn't end up in Darkness Descends. 

“And we were late to cover when we did the ‘Immigrant Song’ in '89, where EVERYONE was covering. But in '86, Black Sabbath weren't loved. It was considered ‘dinosaur rock’ or something. Black Sabbath dude! Born Again was the last album released 3 years ago. They weren't in a good mood. ‘They broke up? Didn't they disband?’ Tony Iommi hadn't made the album with Glenn Hughes that wasn't exactly Black Sabbath. So we were thinking ‘Let's give Sabbath some love, because no one loves them anymore!’ We were also thinking about Anvil's ‘Motormount’. It was proto-thrash...there wouldn't be thrash without Anvil, or Venom and Motörhead of course.

Dark Angel is:

Gene Hoglan -Drums
Ron Rinehart -Vocals
Eric Meyer - Guitar
Michael Gonzalez -Bass
Laura Christine - Guitar