Found this in February, appropriately/ironically in one of my last CD hauls before everything shut down because of the pandemic. (The store also had the case for the Sepultura Arise remaster, but unfortunately the wrong disc was inside). I don't dislike this album by any means--in fact, just listening to it again for this post made it grow on me tremendously--but even if it clicks further, I'm afraid it will always be in the shadow of Consuming Impulse for me, which is one of the earliest death metal albums (and CDs) I ever bought. They're very good as thrash, but Consuming is just exceptional DM to me, one of the best albums in the genre.
I've noticed some songs (particularly the first two) have fairly verbose lyrics that need to be sung in a relatively compact space, and van Drunen sometimes seems on the cusp of being mushmouthed trying to get them all out (the verses on the title track of Darkness Descends also suffer from this, and perhaps parts of "Hell Awaits" to a certain extent too).
I often lament that I didn't have this blog during the late '90s-mid '00s to document the period when I was constantly finding gems in the bargain bins on a near weekly basis, so it was nice to find something old and classic like this show up. Of course, I couldn't just enjoy my great luck and was slightly disappointed when I saw the matrix was for the '91 repress rather than the original '88 press. Still, up until now I've only had the Displeased CDs with the bonus demo tracks, so this was a spectacular find regardless.
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