# Darkness Descends

Darkness Descends is the second studio album by the American thrash metal band Dark Angel, released on November 17, 1986. Released at the height of thrash metal's popularity, Darkness Descends received positive reviews from music critics, and has been cited as a major influence on the death metal, doom metal and groove metal scenes of the late 1980s and 1990s.
Though bassist Rob Yahn appears on the album, Mike Gonzalez received credit in the liner notes. Darkness Descends was Dark Angel's final album to feature original vocalist Don Doty. The album is the first to feature influential drummer Gene Hoglan.

## Music and lyrics

The song "Darkness Descends" is about the comic book characters known as the Dark Judges from the Judge Dredd comic book series, and even contains their famous statement, "this city is guilty, the crime is life, the sentence is death." "Death Is Certain (Life Is Not)" deals with euthanasia. "Black Prophecies" addresses Nostradamus's prophetic gift and the foretelling of Hitler. "Perish in Flames" describes a pilot's thoughts as he destroys a ground target with terrible weapons. "The Burning of Sodom" tells the story of Lot's flight from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. "Merciless Death" is a re-recording of a song from Dark Angel's previous album We Have Arrived.
Dark Angel drummer Gene Hoglan described the writing process, "Well, to be honest, the “mixed bag” of other writers on Darkness Descends was more like a riff here and there. Eric Meyer wrote a riff on “The Burning of Sodom,” so we gave him credit. Eric also got credit for writing something in “Death Is Certain (Life Is Not).” But I can guarantee you that that was me, Jim and [bassist] Rob Yahn who wrote that song and Eric just had an idea for how to start off the song. But back then I didn’t really know much about songwriting credits and all that."

## Reception and legacy

Professional ratings :
| Review scores ||
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic | |
| Collector's Guide to Heavy Metal | 6/10 |
In August 2014, Revolver placed Darkness Descends on its "14 Thrash Albums You Need to Own" list. Decibel Magazine placed it 9th on its "50 Greatest Thrash Metal Albums of All Time." Loudwire placed Darkness Descends at number 6 on its "Top Ten Thrash Albums NOT Released by the Big 4" list. It is considered to be a classic in the thrash metal genre.
Gene Hoglan retrospectively said of his performance on the album, "I was an 18-year-old kid with a whole lot of energy who thought he knew what he was doing, but totally didn’t. On that record, I was woefully un-tight. And we certainly did not have a great guitar sound [...] We actually slowed down drastically when we recorded [the album]. We were much faster before that — because I believed that you needed to really feel it to be at your best, and unless you were playing as fast as you [could], you probably weren’t really feeling it. I just didn’t have the proper philosophies back then. So Darkness Descends is just a challenging album to listen to, from my standpoint. I appreciate that people enjoy it and I’m grateful that it has kept up its reputation over the years, but it’s not an easy album for me to listen to."

## Track listing
### Icarus Records 2010 remastered bonus tracks

Darkness Descends on Philadelphia - DFA Live at the Trocadero, October 23, 1988
Darkness Descends on Reseda - DFA Live at the Country Club April 22, 1989

## Personnel
### Dark Angel

* Don Doty – lead vocals
* Eric Meyer – lead and rhythm guitar, engineer
* Jim Durkin – lead and rhythm guitar
* Rob Yahn – bass, engineer (bass recording)
* Gene Hoglan – drums
* Ron Rinehart – vocals on the live recordings
* Mike Gonzalez – bass on the live recordings

### Production

* Randy Burns – producer, engineer
* Casey McMackin – engineer