DARKNESS - Death Squad CD

Limited edition of 500 copies. Jewel case comes in slipcase with poster. Remastered by Patrick W. Engel.

12-panel folding booklet with lyrics.

The background story of Darkness is quite interesting, they have released five consecutive demos before releasing a proper full-length album. They started out as a trio and ended up as a five-piece later on for their first album, drummer and founding member Lacky was also busy doing the vocals back then. He did the vocal duties in the first few demos such as "Titanic War" for example (which I really recommend to give a listen). These demos were really harsh and raw, and the vocals of Lacky were also pretty extreme, a bit similar to what Sodom did in their early days. However, Darkness lived in the shadows of the bigger bands of Germany in that time, but still were able to release some great material.

In 1986, the band decided to recruit a proper singer and so came the most known Darkness vocalist Olli (R.I.P.). They released a last demo called "Spawn of the Dark One" and then followed what we have here, the first full-length 1987 album titled "Death Squad". First and foremost, I have to say that I really like the vocals of Olli featured on this album, the voice tone is really unique and sounds truly Germanic. In fact, there's nothing I hate sound-wise on this record, the mix is insanely good. All the instruments are heard very well, especially the bass guitar, which has an impressive sound for an album of 80s German thrash metal. This album features 9 tracks and has a running time totaling nearly 37 minutes of length.