DARK ANGEL — Time Does Not Heal (review)

DARK ANGEL — Time Does Not Heal album cover

Album · 1991 · Thrash Metal

3.5/5 · 2016-12-14
UMUR

"Time Does Not Heal" is the 4th full-length studio album by US thrash metal act Dark Angel. The album was released through Combat Records in February 1991. "Time Does Not Heal" was the last album Dark Angel released before they disbanded in 1992. Since the release of "Leave Scars (1989)" guitarist Jim Durkin has been replaced by Brett Eriksen. "Time Does Not Heal" is usually considered a fan base divider because of the literally hundreds of riffs and long complex song structures, which tend to turn some people off. Something that was already introduced on "Leave Scars (1989)" albeit in more moderate doses.

Stylistically the music on "Time Does Not Heal" is aggressive and technically well played thrash metal. As mentioned above the album is extremely riff loaded and the tracks feature several tempo changes and usually many different sections. Most tracks on the 9 track, 67:09 minutes long album exceed the 7 minutes mark. The lyrics are dark and predominatly deal with rape, abuse, violence, and the concequences of those actions seen from the victim´s perspective, which is actually a bit of a rarity in extreme metal, where lyrics dealing with those subjects are often seen through the eyes of the perpetrator.

Dark Angel are as usual a very well playing act. The aggressive riffs are delivered with fierce conviction and the drumming by Gene Hoglan is on a high technical level. Lead vocalist Ron Rinehart has a raw delivery although this time around he tries to put slightly more melody into his perfermance. With mixed results. While his usual raw thrashy vocal delivery is a bit one-dimensional, his experimentation with more melodic vocal melodies fall flat on the ground, as a result of his limited range. He sounds awfully strained at times, and it´s not exactly rewarding for the listening experience.

The sound production is more polished than the case was on the more raw and muddy sounding predecessor, but the guitars still sound a bit thin and overall it´s not the most powerful sounding production out there.

As far as development goes and the fact that a lot of other contemporary thrash metal acts were experimenting with longer song structures around the same time too, it´s not a surprise that "Time Does Not Heal" sounds like it does. As mentioned above it´s quite a controversial release that divided the band´s fanbase. Some loved the new technical direction, while others loathed the excessive number of riffs and long cryptic song structures. I personally belong in the latter camp. I have a hard time appreciating the long tracks which I feel overstay their welcome by several minutes and the fact that many of them lack memorable hooks to help tell them apart is not exactly a positive either. It´s an album that´s extremely hard to sit through in one listening session and I usually listen to a couple of songs at a time, because otherwise it becomes quite a tedious listen.

It starts off pretty well with the title track and "Pain's Invention, Madness", but I´d be surprised if I hadn´t said the same no matter which tracks they had picked to open the album with. That´s how similar in quality and style these tracks are. Unfortunately they sound too much the same and the excessive use of riffs and sections make the tracks less catchy than they probably would have been had they been more compact and had the band picked only the very best riffs for the tracks.

So it´s an album that could have been very interesting and certainly features enough intriguing ideas for that to happen, but ultimately it doesn´t, because the band are more focused on playing and incorporating those hundreds of riffs than they are on writing memorable tunes. The word "excessive" comes to mind far too many times during the playing time. Still it´s not a completely terrible album and I do enjoy it in small doses, so as I do give points for trying to create something unique I guess a 3 - 3.5 star (65%) rating isn´t all wrong.

more than 2 years ago
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Unitron wrote:

more than 2 years ago

Great review, although I personally find that there are a lot of memorable riffs on the album. The title cut, "The New Priesthood", and "Sensory Deprivation" are all among my top Dark Angel songs.