Dark Angel-Darkness descends, 1986

When you think of the LA scene in the 1980's you probably normally think of bands like Motley Crue, Ratt and Poison. However there were quite a few speed metal bands coming out of that city at the same time. Slayer and Megadeth you know about, but there was also Agent Steel, Hirax, Cryptic Slaughter, Evildead, Viking and Dark Angel. Dark Angel's debut "We have arrived" came out on a tiny label in 1985 and it was decent, but certainly rough. The band did change drummers after that as the recruited former Slayer roadie Gene Hoglan (later of Testament, Death and others) plus they landed a deal with Combat records. I listened to a lot of speed metal between say 1985 and 1993. Yet when I go back I find that a lot of bands I once loved just were not that heavy although they may have been fast. Fortunately Dark Angel do maintain that heaviness and they found a good balance between speed and heaviness. This is a fairly intense album as far as mid-80's thrash goes. At first it reminds me some of Slayer with elements of both "Reign in blood" and "Hell Awaits" yet they go beyond that and added their own ideas as well. Some of the songs are fairly long for thrash at the time and they manage to control the pace while bringing giant walls of sound at times. Dark Angel were fairly strong writers and they knew how to build a song up and that wasn't a common thing for thrash then as many bands just went for the smash ahead for three minutes approach. Still the biggest strength is the heaviness and they manage to maintain that throughout the seven songs here and keep it interesting. I think they were one of the better speed metal bands of the times for sure. I wore out my cassette of this back in high school, but I'm glad to have it on CD now.