17 years after the iconoclast record “World Downfall” was released this “project” band returns with their second album. The expectations where high, but many of us knew that it will be almost impossible for Jesse Pintado (RIP 2006) and Pete Sandoval to accomplished what they did back in 1989, why? Simple, Terrorizer never really solidified as a band, heck they just lasted 2 years, and “World Downfall” was recorded after they broke up; so why come back now?, well maybe because Sandoval hasn’t really put out anything worth mentioning since Morbid Angel’s “Heretic” in 2003, a record that didn’t create all the fuss many were expecting, or perhaps it was the fact that Pintado wasn’t working with Napalm Death anymore, or maybe it was just time for another raw, crushing death metal album!!!

First of, the line up is different Oscar Garcia is not on vocal duties here; he is missed on this “Darker Days Ahead” the new singer Anthony Rezhawk (Resistant Culture) does a good job providing all the growls necessary for the tracks to sound deep and corrosive, his vocals are fairly understandable yet he brigs that crude underground death metal sound to the album, a good call really, still I would have prefer to hear Garcia on this album.

“Darker Days Ahead” tried to capture that early underproduced sound that made “World Downfall” such a classic, they gave it a good shoot, but it’s very hard to recapture a sound that was just something close to an experiment back in the day when Scott Burns was a rookie; non the less the record sounds crude and hard pounding. The riffs are simple just like Terrorizer used to do it, but this time they sound cleaner and sharper, and there are a couple of hooks placed on songs like “Crematorium”, “Fallout” and “Victim of Greed” that may help you digest the album a little faster.

Sandoval does what Sandoval knows best, hyper speed drums with just the right amount of dirt on them to make every song more brutal.

This is a very good death metal record; the problem is that it comes 17 years after a fantastic and “revolutionary” album, making the name Terrorizer a huge burden that the people involved in the project cannot surpass no matter what they do, still if you are a Terrorizer fan you are going to love it, and if you have never heard “World Downfall” you are going to love it, so there is pretty much nothing to lose when you pick this album from your record store.