Interview by Kris Peters
The endurance of melodic power metal outfit Fifth Angel is remarkable.
After starting in Seattle in the mid 1980s and enjoying massive success with their self titled debut album, co-produced with famed music producer Terry Date (who later went on to produce Pantera, Soundgarden, White Zombieand more), Fifth Angel remained at the forefront of heavy metal of an era - which also included Queensryche and Metal Church - in a town that has since become known mainly for its output of grunge acts.
This swarm of emerging bands and music eventually caused the premature disbanding of Fifth Angel, who remained that way until being enticed out of retirement to perform at Germany's Keep It True Festival in 2010.
The band received an overwhelming outpouring of positivity at that show and subsequently reformed Fifth Angel on a more permanent basis and picked up pretty much where they left off, eventually releasing their first album in nearly 30 years titled The Third Secret.
That journey culminates with the release of When Angels Kill on June 16, a double concept album that weaves lyrics and subject matter from their first three albums into a fascinating tale of love, catastrophic events, isolation, and impending doom.
Drummer Ken Mary joined HEAVY to reveal more.
"We felt like we wanted to make this a little bit more progressive," he began. "But at the same time we wanted to hark back to the feeling of our first album, which was a darker type of record. This album is perhaps the darkest of all the Fifth Angel albums. It's a very heavy record. The story is a heavy story, but it's an interesting story and I think it's a good story. It centres around four main characters. There's a young man named Phoenix and he has two friends, a girl named Lana and Dylan who ends up being his best friend. They are living in a world that's a little dystopian and is now being run by a global tyrant and so this tyrant is not against subjugating the entire world through force. So if you wanna resist that it could be fatal and that really is what the story is about. It's about these young people's attempts to resist the tyrant. The story takes you through that process. They are trying to survive and there's also a love story that happens, there's some natural disasters that happen, there's some terrorism that happens so it's a deep, dark story but I think one that I think the fans will enjoy and I think our Fifth Angel fans will really enjoy because a lot of the lyrics and song titles... there are little Easter Eggs that lead you back to the earlier records. So if you want to know more about what's happening you can go and listen to the songs that are referenced on this record and get an even greater idea of what's going on."
In the full interview, Ken talks more about the album musically, weaving three stories into one, the flow of the album, what lessons the band has learnt over the course of their career, the early days of Fifth Angel in the Seattle scene, following the lead of Queensryche and focussing on getting their first album right more than touring, their eventual disbanding and why, getting the chemistry back when they reformed, future plans and more.