Despite its title, a play on a track from their 2008 album
Killing Season,
Death Angel's
Sonic German Beatdown features not one song from that disc; it was recorded at the Rock Hard Festival in 2007, so the set focuses very heavily on the group's first three albums (four tracks from
The Ultra-Violence, two from
Frolic in the Park, and four from
Act III), tossing in four cuts from the then-newish
The Art of Dying. The actual performances are generally strong; some songs seem slowed down in a concession to age (and "The Ultra-Violence," originally an almost-11-minute prog-thrash excursion, has been cut down to 4:35), but that only serves to blend them more seamlessly with the new ones, which in their studio versions had a heaviness and groove lacking in their speedy, technical '80s albums. Vocalist
Mark Osegueda sounds more or less exactly like he did as a teenager, shrieking his throat raw as guitarists Ted Aguilar and
Rob Cavestany, bassist
Dennis Pepa, and drummer Andy Galeon tear it up behind him. It's worthy of note that, though
Death Angel's undergone a lot of membership upheaval in the last year or so, this disc features almost the entire original lineup; only co-founding guitarist
Gus Pepa, who never returned after the band split in 1991, is absent. As such, it's a powerful souvenir of a band that made its name in the '80s, only to come back in the 2000s a hell of a lot stronger than anybody had any right to expect. ~ Phil Freeman