DARK ANGEL — Leave Scars (review)

Album · 1989 · Thrash Metal

3.5/5 · 2016-12-07
UMUR

"Leave Scars" is the 3rd full-length studio album by US thrash metal act Dark Angel. The album was released in January 1989 through Combat Records in the US and through Under One Flag in Europe. There have been two lineup changes since the recording sessions for "Darkness Descends (1986)" as bassist Rob Yahn has been replaced by Mike Gonzalez (the change happened immediately after the recording sessions for "Darkness Descends (1986)") and potentially a bit more disturbing lead vocalist Don Doty has been replaced by Ron Rinehart.

The latter mentioned does a great job here though, performing his vocal parts with both passion and conviction. He is a raw sounding vocalist and his voice isn´t miles away from Don Doty´s voice. Stylistically the music on "Leave Scars" more or less continues the raw and generally fast-paced thrash metal style of it´s predecessor. In the 3 years between the two albums, Dark Angel have become a bit more compositionally sophisticated though. The lyrics have more depth (mostly written by drummer Gene Hoglan), than on the predecessor and the tracks are generally longer (5 out of 9 tracks are longer than 7 minutes in length) and feature more different riff sections, more guitar solos, and are structurally more complex.

In a lot of positive ways "Leave Scars" is the natural successor to "Darkness Descends (1986)", but not everything are pure bliss on "Leave Scars". First of all the sound production lacks power. The guitars are too low in the mix and the drums often drown in the mix when they play faster parts. The bass drums also have a thumb sound to them that doesn´t bring much power to the music. It´s too bad because it´s obvious that "Leave Scars" features about a million powerful, fast-paced, and edgy thrash metal riffs and some really great drumming by Gene Hoglan, that deserve better. Fortunately the voice production is decent. Another issue is that while the riffs on the album are generally of high quality and nicely aggressive too, some of the tracks feel too long and tedious as a consequence of them featuring too many sections. Especially the 7:20 minutes long instrumental "Cauterization" is a bit of a snore fest. Although pretty short, Dark Angel´s take on the Led Zeppelin classic "Immigrant Song" is also a bit of a showstopper as it doesn´t work well for the overall flow of the album and isolated seen it´s just not a very good cover version.

On the positive side tracks like the opening trio "The Death of Innocence", "Never to Rise Again", and "No One Answers" are aggressive thrash metal tunes delivered with fierce conviction, that fully showcase what Dark Angel were capable of in those years. To be honest I´m a bit biased towards "Leave Scars", because on one hand it´s an album full of the metal virtues I love like fast-paced thrash metal riffing, technical/powerful drumming, and aggressive vocals, but on the other hand it has a tendency to occasionally become a bit overblown and tedious and the muddy sound production doesn´t exactly do the music any favours either. So as much as I would like to rate "Leave Scars" higher, I can´t give more than a 3.5 star (70%) rating.