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Death Angel Used In Psychological Study

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16 years ago

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San Francisco Bay Area thrash legends, DEATH ANGEL, were recently used in a psychological study that shows liked and disliked music are equally disruptive to serial recall. The disliked music in the study… the song “Thrashers” by DEATH ANGEL. Dr. Nick Perham explained his reasoning by using DEATH ANGEL as the “disliked” music in the study:
“We needed a track that most participants would say they did not like. Having been a fan of metal music since my teens, I was pretty confident that a thrash metal song would do the trick as most people never seemed to like the music I liked. In choosing a thrash metal song, I needed a song that was heavy but also allowed the listener to hear many of the different components of the song – the acoustical variation between the successive sound items. We chose ‘Thrashers’. Participants were only allowed to participate in the study if they disliked thrash metal as a musical genre.
Personally, I have been a fan of DEATH ANGEL since The Ultra-Violence’and saw them at the Bristol Bierkeller around 1990 supporting the Act III album.”

For decades research has shown that listening to music can alleviate anxiety and depression, enhance mood, as well as increase cognitive functioning such as spatial awareness. However, until now, research has not addressed how we listen to music. For instance, is the cognitive benefit still the same if we listen to music whilst performing a task, rather than before it? Further, how does our preference for a particular type of music affect performance? A new study from Applied Cognitive Psychology shows that listening to music that one likes whilst performing a serial recall task does not help performance any more than listening to music one does not enjoy.
 
The researchers explored the ‘irrelevant sound effect’ by requiring participants to perform serial recall (recall a list of 8 consonants in presentation order) in the presence of five sound environments – quiet, liked music (e.g., RIHANNA, LADY GAGA, STRANGLERS and ARCADE FIRE), disliked music (the track ‘Thrashers’ by DEATH ANGEL), changing-state (a sequence of random digits such as ‘4, 7, 1, 6’) and steady-state (‘3, 3, 3’). Recall ability was approximately the same, and poorest, for the music and changing-state conditions and the most accurate recall occurred when participants performed the task in the quieter steady-state environments.
 
Lead researcher Nick Perham explains: “The poorer performance of the music and changing-state sounds are due to them containing lots of acoustical variation the order of which impairs the ability to recall the order of items, via rehearsal, within the presented list.  Other tasks and processes that also require the ability to retain order information in the short-term via rehearsal, such as mental arithmetic, may be similarly affected by their performance in the presence of changing-state, background environments.”
 
Although music can have a very positive effect on our general mental health, music can, in the circumstances described, also have negative effects on cognitive performance. Perham remarks, “Most people listen to music at the same time as, rather than prior to, performing a task but to reduce the negative effects of background music when recalling information in order, one should either perform the task in quiet or only listen to music prior to performing the task.”
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‘The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only Live’ Concert Event to Make Streaming Debut Next Month

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2 days ago

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July 14, 2026

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The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only Live

AMC has announced that The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only LIVE, the standing-room-only performance celebrating AMC’s premiere of its newly-released The Vampire Lestat at New York City’s iconic Beacon Theatre last month, will debut on streaming.

The Vampire Lestat: One Night Only LIVE begins streaming on AMC+ on August 23.

Ahead of its streaming premiere, fans can preview the concert event, featuring original songs from series composer Daniel Hart and performed by Sam Reid, in Hall H at Comic Con International on July 24. 

Our own Daniel Kurland attended the special event, highlighting how electric the Immortal Vampire is on stage: “It’s clear in this season of television that Reid was born to be a rock star, but it’s surreal to see him effortlessly command the stage — and the audience — at every step of the concert. He recites Shakespeare monologues and bitches out Armand between songs, all while the audience screams in support. For the duration of this concert, Reid is Lestat, and he’s given thousands of fans a memory that’s as immortal as any vampire.”

Based on Anne Rice‘s The Vampire Chronicles book series, The Vampire Lestat is the rock and roll-centric third season of AMC’s “Interview with the Vampire” created by showrunner Rolin Jones.

The Vampire Lestat goes on an electric multi-city tour while being haunted by “muses” from his wild and rebellious past. As his band’s popularity and star power rises, so does Lestat’s influence over vampires and humans alike, leaving others to contend with Lestat’s power in the face of the Great Conversion, an unnatural surge in the vampire population.

Jacob Anderson, Assad Zaman, Eric Bogosian, Delainey Hayles and Jennifer Ehle star with Reid. Executive producers include Jones, Mark Johnson, Hannah Moscovitch, the late Anne Rice, and her son Christopher Rice.

The series finale airs this Sunday, July 19, on AMC and AMC+.

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