Angel has risen to the next level with new release

Stephen H. Provost is the author of Pop Goes the Metal: Hard Rock, Hairspray, Hooks & Hits, chronicling the evolution of pop metal from its roots in the 1960s through its heyday as “hair metal” in the 1980s and beyond. It’s available on Amazon.

Angel released a new album last year. And it’s quite good. Why did it take so long for me to get around to listening? The truth is, I just found out about it, because I’ve hadn’t actually kept up with the band.

Here’s the thing: I always felt I should have liked Angel, but I never could get excited about them back in the day. I was a huge KISS fan in the 1970s, so when I was intrigued when I discovered the band’s label had signed this band, which was described as a sort of anti-KISS.

Both bands played hard rock with a groove and were known for their theatrical live shows; Angel was actually discovered by KISS’s “Demon,” Gene Simmons, and both were signed to Casablanca Records. Like KISS, Angel had an iconic logo, designed by a fan, that looked the same upside-down as it did right-side-up. Eddie Kramer, who produced a demo tape and half a dozen albums for KISS, also handled Angel’s third release. Even the art for their fourth album, White Hot, seemed like a lesser version of KISS’s Destroyer motif, which had come out a couple of years earlier.

But while KISS wore all black and explored glam metal’s dark side, Angel came onstage clad in flowing white satin and produced songs that were a bit lighter and more romantic. (They could have called themselves “Knights in White Satin.”) They even featured regular keyboard player.

Tower, the opening track on their debut album, sounded more like Rush-meets-Asia than KISS, and was an auspicious start if you like that sort of thing, as I do. But what followed never really held me. The hooks weren’t quite hooky enough, and the keyboards were too prominent for my taste. Apart from the first two tracks off White Hot and a few others — their cover of Walk Away Renee off their postmortem An Anthology release in 1992 comes to mind — they never really connected with me.

Breakup and reformation

Apparently, the same was true with the public at large. Like KISS, they developed a cult following, but unlike KISS, they never managed to expand their base. They never had a hit in the top 40, peaking at No. 44 with a cover of Ain’t Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore in 1977. Following in KISS’s footsteps, they tried to kickstart their flagging fortunes with a double-live album in 1980, but when the attempt ended in failure, the band ended, too.

Despite their lack of a major breakthrough, however, Angel holds a unique and important place in the history of glam metal, hair metal, pop metal or whatever you want to call it. Along with Sweet, a band that produced a similarly inconsistent — but overall, stronger and more successful — ’70s catalog, they created a bridge between late-’60s pop-rock and the ’80 hair explosion headlined by the likes of Bon Jovi and Poison. Angel would have fit neatly into the latter category; they were, in a very real sense, ahead of their time.

Still, I pretty much forgot about them. Some of the former members, led by vocalist Frank DiMino, regrouped for a 1999 album titled In The Beginning, which passed largely unnoticed, then went silent again until last year, when DiMino and original guitarist Punky Meadows gathered a new group of bandmates to record Risen. Absent for both the newer records: original keyboardist Gregg Giuffria.

Evolution

Nothing against Giuffria, a gifted musician who produced one of the better melodic metal tunes of the 1980s with his eponymous band’s Call to the Heart, but his absence created a sound that’s harder, more focused and more enjoyable — at least to my ear. The keys are still there, in undercurrents and occasional flourishes, but they complement the overall sound rather than dominating it. The guitars are front and center, as they should be for a hard rock band.

(Note: The same thing happened to Giuffria’s next band, House of Lords, which turned to a more guitar-based sound after his departure, and was also better for it.)

Another improvement: DiMino’s vocals have matured, too, at least to my ear. In looks and vocal style, he always seemed like something of a cross between Ronnie James Dio and the late Kevin DuBrow of Quiet Riot. It’s not that his voice is better than it used to be, but that he seems in better command of it than he was during Angel’s first incarnation.

Going back and listening to In the Beginning, I found I enjoyed it more than Angel’s early albums, too. But it seemed pretty far removed from the band’s roots. Some tracks, such as the Kashmir-y Shangri-La, sound more like Led Zeppelin than Angel. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s kind of like KISS trying to record a grunge album with Carnival of Souls. (For my money, Angel pulled it off a lot better than KISS did.)

Risen

Where Risen succeeds is in returning to — and improving upon — Angel’s melodic ’70s material and giving it a welcome harder edge. The band manages to remain true to itself while, at the same time, exploring a number of styles and influences. The song quality is more consistent, and the return of original guitarist Meadows, who wasn’t on In the Beginning, may be part of the reason. His solos on tracks like We Were the Wild, one of the standouts, show why he was once offered spots in both KISS and Aerosmith.

The album opener, Under the Gun (which actually follows a short instrumental intro), and its follow-up, Shot of Your Love, provide the same kind of potent one-two punch the band delivered to kick off White Hot. One big difference: The new release contains a whopping 17 tracks, with several other standouts among them. Tell Me Why is a killer ’60s throwback number that sounds like a lost track from the 1996 nostalgia flick That Thing You Do! Then there’s 1975, a lyrical nostalgia trip back to the year of Angel’s debut release.

I.O.U. is a touching ballad in the vein of Beth that manages to avoid getting too sentimental, if just barely.

Desire is a driving rocker with a killer guitar solo that briefly switches gears into a boogie-rock refrain. Parts of Slow Down would have sounded right at home on Quiet Riot’s Metal Health, with a bit of David Lee Roth-esque cheekiness thrown in for good measure.

One of the heaviest songs on the album, My Sanctuary starts out like something from Metallica before settling into a more classic-Angel sound. Over My Head, follows a similar template with a driving intro, and manages to be both melodic and heavy at the same time: Think KISS meets Status Quo. There’s even an updated version of Tower that does justice to the original.

Other members of the updated Angel lineup are rhythm guitarist Danny Farrow, who played with DiMino on his previous project, keyboardist Charlie Calv, bassist Steve Ojane and drummer Billy Orrico. You can find Risen on iTunes or Amazon.