The Dark

Metal Church | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Elektra / Wea
• ASIN: B000002H3T
• Also Available in: Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #44,322 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

No Description Available
No Track Information Available
Media Type: CD
Artist: METAL CHURCH
Title: DARK
Street Release Date: 07/07/1987
Domestic
Genre: HEAVY METAL

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Killer Songs With A Poor Production, January 7, 2003

By 

SpacegrassMan (Insane Land of Words & Music) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Dark (Audio CD)

I'm a massive Metal church fan and will always consider this one of the classic metal releases along with their first one. But, unlike the first one, the production on this one, the sound, was not up to par. The songs themselves are killer, trademark Church, no doubt. However, the sound level was low, not as clear as the first, which makes you have to hit the bass boost on the your amp, and have the volume knob higher up the dial than most CD's. Killer songs though, not to be missed. Picks are: Ton of Bricks, The Dark, Psycho, Start The Fire, and of course, Watch The Children Pray. If you want to hear some of these songs loud beyond belief, with a clear production, pick up their live import on here, Metal Church Live. Cheers from Scraggy's Tomb!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Danzo's review of THE DARK, April 19, 1999

By 

danzo (queens, ny) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dark (Audio CD)

After a stellar first album released in 1985, Metal Church returned from the road and into the studio to record one of their best albums, The Dark. The music is fairly simple and catchy. Once you get to know the album it becomes hard to put down.

There are no bad songs here. Of note are energetic opener "Ton of Bricks", the extremely underrated "Method To Your Madness", which contains an uncharacteristically laid-back, commercial feel, and the ageless heavy metal classic "Watch The Children Pray."

If you're looking for a solid straight-ahead metal album from the mid 1980s, it's hard to go wrong with The Dark.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Burning Metal Intensity, February 19, 2001

By 

Craig R. Whitney (Staten Island, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dark (Audio CD)

Metal Church stand as one of the most innovated- and unfortunately, one of the most underappreciated - heavy metal artists of the 1980's. And "The Dark" is, without a doubt, the masterpiece of their hard-driven air-guitar assault.

The drums are intense, seemingly keeping up a savage beat that only enhances an already ferocious metal effort. The guitars are well-worked out, and the vocals are beatifully unstable, showing melody as well as unbelievable range and power. Most importantly, the beat and melody are interlocked, not separated like oil and water (like Metallica were in their true metal days). This makes the album almost like punk -in the sense that it's free-flowing and not ridden with ponderous guitar solos (again, like Metallica).

Proving themselves totally unlike Bon Govi and Def Leppard, Metal Church offers only true heavy metal tracks on "The Dark". Songs on pure agression (Ton of Bricks, Start the Fire), mutiny and rebellion (Line of Death), an occult-oriented number (We Watch the Children Pray), war (Method to Your Madness), Hitler's impending war for conquest (Western Alliance).

In the sense of sub-genre, Metal Church lies between blues-rootled power metal like Judas Priest and Manowar and "straight" thrash like Exodus. "The Dark" is, in my opinion, the best Metal Church album and the tracks illustrate my above point. Final say: "The Dark" is somewhat similar to Anthrax's "Fistful of Metal" in terms of it's contribution to classic metal and it's genre-label defying type of music.