Pop : Death Angel: Cute, Not Scary

Death Angel--not to be confused with Dark Angel or Fifth Angel or Morbid Angel or Death--played to a sold-out Country Club on Saturday, and the relative good cheer in the house almost gave death metal a bad name. If any death-metal band can cross over into regular FM radio, it could be these guys, the hottest metal band of the month.

They’re not scary like Sodom--they’re kind of cute, in fact, five young Filipino cousins from the Bay Area, kind of the Osmonds of thrash, so there’s that family sort of thing too--and their music is clean, moody, technically accomplished and almost melodic. You couldn’t imagine their slick, new album “Act III” blasting out of a tape deck in “River’s Edge,” much less being held accountable for a teen’s suicide. It’s really close to plain old rock ‘n’ roll. The band drew an oddly normal, if shaggy crowd, frat dudes and couples on date night in addition to the usual wild-eyed kids in ragged Slaytanic T-shirts.

Openers Forbidden, another young Bay Area death-metal band, is still at the stage where it sounds like every other death-metal band, all crunch and bravado, though in three albums it may sound more like Van Halen than like Venom. Nice hair, though.