NEWS: Fifth Angel reunion

Seattle traditional and melodic metal band Fifth Angel has announced that on April 22, 2017 they will play a reunion show at El Corazón, Seattle, Washington state, U.S. Then they will travel to Germany to play at Keep It True. The current members of the band are: Ed Archer - guitars; Ken Mary - drums; John Macko - bass; Kendall Bechtel - guitars; Peter Orullian - vocals. The older supporters will notice that the band's historical singer on the albums from the 1980s, namely Ted Pilot, is not participating. It is a well known fact amongst the knowledgeable supporters of the band that the beloved singer quit the music business altogether in the late 80s/early 90s and is now a successful dental surgeon in the Seattle area. The new vocalist, Orullian, according to Metal Archives, is a former member of Heir Apparent (from 2004 to 2006), the Seattle progressive metal band.

It is worth noting that Fifth Angel reunited back in 2010 for what seems to have been a festival appearance at Keep It True and it appears that Orullian was also the singer on that occasion. For the record, all four current instrumentalists in the band appear to be the same personnel as found on the band's last studio album from 1989, Time Will Tell.

The band is known for its two quality albums of highly memorable traditional and melodic heavy metal: Fifth Angel in 1986 and Time Will Tell in 1989. After the latter album, Metal Archives shows that there is no more official recorded output.

For Fifth Angel supporters in the Seattle area, the show on April 22 will be an excellent opportunity to hear this new incarnation of the band.

If you have never heard of Fifth Angel, go their Facebook page and see some of the videos that they have posted there, including studio songs from the above albums. The band has been active on Facebook recently.

OFFICIAL: Back in the glory days of traditional metal in the 1980's, with the likes of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, The Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Deep Purple, Ronnie James Dio, Led Zeppelin and many others as an influence... Ed Archer, Ted Pilot and James Byrd had a vision. This vision was to blend their various musical influences and backgrounds together to form a new version of traditional metal. Thus, the inception of the band "Fifth Angel". Ken Mary was brought on board on drums, and would later move on to much success playing in bands such as House Of Lords, Bad Moon Rising, and Alice Cooper, to name but a few.

From their beginnings in 1984 in Bellevue Washington (near Seattle), Fifth Angel sought to create a musical landscape of their own to express ideas, thoughts, opinions and emotions in the most eloquent form, in the form of music and story-telling through lyrics. Fifth Angel recorded a demo with the now famed Terry Date at the mixing desk and was first signed to independent label Shrapnel Records, which opened the door to an international following and a very positive acceptance of their vision. John Macko was brought on board to become the permanent bass player around this time.

Through fate and happenstance, the band caught the ear of Derek Simon with Concrete Marketing and Management in New York, NY. This again opened new doors for the band leading to offers from various major labels including Atlantic, Elektra and Epic, the latter being the label which seemed the best fit. Epic Records re-released the original "Fifth Angel" album, giving it new life with re-mastering and cover art and the band began the journey of composing new material for a second album, to be the debut for the Epic label. This was also a time of change for the band as Kendall Bechtel became the new lead guitar player.

"Time Will Tell" was recorded with Terry Brown producing, from Rush fame, and was released to a much wider world audience through Epic's far reaching distribution network, being met with much anticipated acceptance. The song "Midnight Love" was featured as the theme song for Howard Stern's cable television show for several years.

In a short period of time the collective musical landscape and listening audience of the world changed...Seattle became a Mecca for a new sound called "Grunge". Fifth Angel was caught in a grey area that many of the up-and-coming 1980's/90's metal bands were in...established enough to be known world-wide to a certain degree, but not established enough to be seen as a profitable investment by record companies when competing against the wildfire known as grunge. The realities of the "business side" of the music industry began to settle in and the writing was on the wall. Ed Archer decided it was time to leave and start a new path in life. Fifth Angel continued on, but as record companies faced the realities of the very profitable grunge music against their bottom line, Fifth Angel was released from their contract with Epic.

The band members went their separate ways, some intertwined with music, some not. Eventually, as fate would have it some of the core band members reconnected and decided it was time to re-visit music and the band became active again in 2010 with a successful reunion gig at the "Keep IT True" Festival in Lauda-Koenigshofen Germany. With "real life" responsibilities dictating progress, it has been slow going....but Fifth Angel is working towards a goal of releasing new music to round out the previous releases from so many years ago. It is unknown if this goal will be reached...only time will tell...

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