Darker Days Ahead

The returns of great bands can be extremely different, some better, some worse - with a greater frequency of the latter. However, in the case of American Terrorizer it's a bit different. Well, actually, a lot better it would be if...Pete Sandoval's band remained the band of one big album and did not come back with more albums! Of course, over time, the Americans from Terrorizer managed to make it better, but their first studio cd in years, which is called "Darker Days Ahead", seems to be a really bad, an ideal excuse to consider the Terrorizer reunion redundant. "Darker..." is completely inadequate to the band's format and not having any comparsion to "World Downfall".

So "Darker..." is disappointing in every way. The level of extremes on it is not impressive, the paces do not kill (despite Pete's excellent blasting), the ideas of the songs are not very interesting, and the worst part is full of boring - and now heavily too well-known in metal - patterns. Unfortunately, all this resulted in a monstrously secondary and reproductive material that would not make a much better impression even under a different name.

Another thing, a new line-up - the other half to be exact. On "Darker..." there are two completely new musicians of Terrorizer. And there are also a lot of glitches at this point. Tony Norman's bass parts barely stand out above the guitars (even by the standards of "rumbling" sound in this style), but more serious blend is Anthony Rezhawk's vocals - completely without any expression. Well, when such a monotonous growl is paired with less exciting music, the album enters as well as warm vodka on a hot noon.

Mediocrity and reproductivity are the biggest domain of "Darker...". You can check "Doomed Forever", "Legacy Of Brutality" or "Blind Army", but these are the biggest positives - but it would not bring even any sensible ep. Interestingly, as many as 4 songs (ie. "Mayhem", "Crematorium", "Fallout", "Nightmare") are new versions of the songs from demos released before the debut, and another great idea is the remake of the song from "World Downfall" ("Dead Shall Rise"). Such a solution illustrates the whole material sufficiently - as recorded in a hurry and ill-considered. After the Pintado-Sandoval duo, I have just demanded more.

Originally on: https://subiektywnymetal.blogspot.com/2020/08/terrorizer-darker-days-ahead-2006.html