Evil Angel

When the young woman Emma Carillo is stabbed five times, paramedic Marcus Galan feels a great empathy for her and unsuccessfully tries to save her life in the Mercy Hospital. Meanwhile the near death patient Caroline Kuntz awakes; kills two people; and leaves the hospital. When Marcus arrives home, he finds his suicidal wife Carla cheating on him with a stranger.

Despite some understandable fits and starts as they shook off the cobwebs of a fourteen year lay off from 1990 to 2004, Death Angel has had a pretty successful second act on the metal stage. Releases like The Dream Calls for Blood and 2016s The Evil Divide showcased a seasoned band comfortable with their place in the thrasherverse and still turning out engaging material true to their glory days. Those albums are as good or better than almost anything the “Big Four” have released lately, and there’s been growing reasons to look upon Death Angel as one of the few survivors of the 80s Bay Area thrash wave still capable of cutting your throat with an ill-tempered riff. That brings us to their ninth album, Humanicide. With the same line up holding steady since 2010, nothing much has changed. There’s still a balance between old school thrash and a modern sound, and the band still dabbles in traditional metal concepts and very subtle prog elements. It’s still meat n’ taters thrash with a high accessibility factor though, and it still sounds like Death Angel.