California thrash legends DEATH ANGEL are heading to Australia in March for a co-headlining jaunt with ARMORED SAINT. Pyromusic.net caught up with singer Mark Osegueda recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

Pyromusic.net: You have a new bass player now. How is Sammy (Diosdado) working out?

Mark Osegueda: "He's great. We had another rehearsal just tonight and he's really nailing all the songs down. It's going to be awesome."

Pyromusic.net: You've worked with Sammy for a few years already in your other band haven't you?

Mark Osegueda: "Yeah. We played together in ALL TIME HIGHS, so we've known each other for a while. When we put it out that we needed a bass player, we tried a few guys out and then Sammy decided that he wanted to try out. That being said, I love Sammy but I never brought his name to the table because I didn't want people to say 'You just want your guy!' (laughs). Andy (Galeon) brought him in for the audition and even after that I wasn't the guy who said 'Let's bring him in.' After he'd played, in all honesty, everyone said he was the guy they were most comfortable with, and I just said 'Yes!' (laughs)."

Pyromusic.net: And when you finish here in Australia, what do you do after that?

Mark Osegueda: "Well, the goal for this year is to already finish writing the album. The plan is to play the Australian dates and then get writing the next album. Rob's already started writing a few riffs and he's thrown a few my way, so he's really battened down to write some new riffs and get some basic structures down, and then he throws a few my way so I can come up with the melodies. But we'll probably end up doing some of the big summer festivals in Europe, so we'll take a bit of downtime then to go out and play live. And after that hopefully we'll have material for the new album written by late this year, early next year. Then get in the studio for a late spring release next year."

To read the entire interview visit this location.