Review by Rexorcist for Dark Angel - Darkness Descends (1986)

Dark Angel's Darkness Descends is considered to be a cornerstone of thrash by the metal community.  Unfortunately, many would say that about Among the Living, too.  Like I do with every album, I'm going to judge this album on my own merits.

Right from the getgo, this album is brutal and villainous to the point of a mental breakdown.  The opening title track has Pleasure to Kill level heaviness and some Metallica melody attached to the intro.  There is a constant power throughout the whole album that keeps you awake and ready to cause mayhem, and so Dark Angel have mastered exactly what the trash sound needs to sound like.  The unfortunate thing is... I was waiting a while for it to get either more melodic or more technical.  In other words, most of what the album is doing is thrashing.  Thankfully, I got some riffage on the fourth track, which is made even better on the virtue of the first three tracks being shorter rather than longer.  So there are moments of creativity that keep the album from just being an impressively heavy album where the production and mixing help the brutality more than the layouts.

This is a cool album for the thrash fan, but considering it one of the greatest of its genre feels a bit too religious to me, like the heaviness can somehow make up for any obvious flaws.  Albums like that are rare for me.  But this is still well worth listening to, and it has about the same creative and heaviness prowess as Pleasure to Kill.