As I mentioned in an earlier review from this festival, a lot of the bands I really wanted to see played already on the first day this year, and Death Angel, who were the last main stage band of the day, certainly fell in under this category as well...

With this thought in mind, I really couldn’t understand why the amount of people in the audience had lessened so compared to the last two bands who played here, Arch Enemy and Airbourne. Surely people could see that it was now the real talent had shown up to give us a heavy dose of thrashing metal mayhem?
Well, obviously not, but that was just their loss! And it does sound worse than it actually was; even though it wasn’t nearly as crowded as it had been for the aforementioned bands, the crowd was still well-filled, and there was a violent mosh running straight from the start of the show all the way to the end.
Things didn’t pass slowly by up on the stage either; Mark Osegueda, whom we know as a master at swinging his mighty dreads around, also swung his microphone around by the mic-stand this night; in fact, he swung it around so much that he accidentally lost it for a moment as it went soaring away through the air!
Truly, at times this whole show looked rather chaotic as all of the members, drummer Will ’Kill’ Carroll excluded for obvious reasons, were a lively bunch indeed (even more so than usually) and wandered/ran all over the stage almost constantly; well, not only limiting themselves to the stage actually, but they could as often as not be seen out on the large speakers in front of the stage as well!

As two of the members on stage, Carroll and bassist Damien Sisson, were new to this place even though Death Angel as a band had been here before (2009), Osegueda felt they needed a special welcome, and a special, warm welcome was what they got from the enthusiastic crowd who gladly shouted their approval of the two musicians.
Other than this and some well assorted clever banter, Osegueda wasn’t much for talking this night. Admittedly, the 50 minutes they had to play in lent itself better to just getting some more songs out there, but this felt like a rather different setlist compared to what I have heard them play before, it would have been kind if he would have introduced a few titles along the way...
One song did get special mention though, as it was respectfully dedicated to one of the biggest voices in metal – Ronnie James Dio, and the song introduced was the very flagship of his illustrious career, the Black Sabbath cover Heaven And Hell.

It’s quite hard for me to compare this show to others by Death Angel which I have seen in the past as I have yet to see a Death Angel show by which I am less than impressed. It may not have stood out from the crowd of the others, but rest assured that this is in no way a negative thing as this band has a very high low point, if you know what I mean.
If not, then let me put it like this: Death Angel delivered a kick-ass ending of the day!

Setlist (incomplete):

Seemingly Endless Time
Relentless Revolution
Heaven And Hell (Black Sabbath cover)