Reviewed by:
slayerific, on december 19, 2007
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Sound: Dark Angel may very well be the fastest metal band that ever existed, as evidenced by their nickname of "LA's caffeine machine." Don't believe me? Than listen to The Burning of Sodom, now lets hear your precious Dragonforce play one of their songs that fast without screwing it up. All Dragonforce kidding aside, in 1986 Darkness Descends would prove to be one of the 3 great "extreme metal" albums that year, along with Kreator's Pleasure To Kill and another little album called Reign In Blood. The biggest star in this band is drummer Gene Hoglan, the guy must be a machine or something because is able to play ridicuously fast. On vocals we have Don Dotty who's voice reminds me a bit of the late Paul Baloff. On guitars we have Jim Durkin and Eric Meyer, and finally on bass we have Mike Gonzalez, although actually Robbie Yahn did play on this. While this album has all kinds of speed and great riffs, its biggest problem is that when listening to it, all the songs kind of blend together. Durkin and Meyer aren't exactly great lead guitarists either as their solos are of the Slayer variety. Robbie Yahn's bass is inaudible except for the start of Merciless Death. However on the plus side it does have Don Dotty, who I've always thought was a way better singer than Ron Rinehart, the bands next singer. And of course a big plus is that you have Gene Hoglan's drumming going on for it too. // 8
Lyrics and Singing: Lyrics on this album are your typical thrash lyrics, you know going out causing destruction, death yadda, yadda, yadda. If I remember correctly I think Gene Hoglan and Don Dotty handled all the lyrics. Anyway it kind of seems like the lyrics are an after thought as the bands main purpose was to play fast music. // 7
Impression: Despite the fact that this album gets a little boring at times, it is still overall a good album. The riffs and drumming are brutal and fast, and really what more could you ask for. The version I have is the remastered version, it comes with some bonus tracks of live versions of Merciless Death, Perish in Flames and the title track. It also comes with linear notes written by Gene that are actually pretty funny. If someone stole this from me, I would hunt them down, kick him in the nuts, and steal back my copy of this album. // 8
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