The great mystique of this album is how utterly massive and nearly flawless it sounds in spite of being recorded and mixed in a mere 8 hours. Part of this can be attributed to the mechanized precision and inhuman ferocity of Pete Sandoval's kit work, which is actually even more intense and unrelenting than the insanity that he displayed on "Altars Of Madness". The level and rapidity of the blast work on this album has been subject to heavy emulation in the years since, and manages to rival even what Flo Mounier would accomplish in the mid 90s with Cryptopsy. But to be sure, "World Downfall" is a collective effort and the punishing yet simple thrashing riff work of Jesse Pintado, the steady bass thud of David Vincent and the guttural yet still intelligible grunts and barks of Oscar Garcia mold this thing into a veritable killing machine. A good analogy would be to take the speed and flair of mid 80s Slayer and late 80s Death, remove most of the melodic detailing and solos, and present a vocalist slightly more rabid sounding but still similar to Chuck Schuldiner.
It should also be noted that while every instrumentalist provides an invaluable piece to this massive puzzle, the album pretty much lives and dies by the stellar engineering work of Scott Burns. This man basically gave birth to what became the death metal sound of the 90s, one that expanded upon the already dark and deep character of the earlier examples of the genre, and ultimately paved the way for a percussive approach to shattering ear drums that is still looked to this day for inspiration. The character of the sound heard on here is fairly close to the thudding, stone-crushing character of Death's "Leprosy" (another of his many studio children), but the drum work manages to come through with a greater level of clarity. That's really the beauty of this album; in spite of all the sonic chaos and battling between the guitars and drums for prominence, an unshakable balance is established through the mix, resulting in something that is arguably the best production job for an extreme album in the entirety of the 80s. Rick Rubin and Andy Wallace could definitely have stood to learn much from what was accomplished on here.
Ultimately, the only thing truly challenging about this album is trying to determine whether it is a grind album or just simply a pure death metal assault minus the guitar solos, particularly given how much the former impacted the evolution of the latter throughout the 90s. Perhaps it depends on what one chooses to take from this album, but even if seeing it more from the grind perspective, one can't help but notice the heavy amount of influence that Slayer and Death had on the shaping of the style heard on it. It's the sort of album that manages to stand tall on its aggression alone in spite of all the expansion the sub-genre has experienced since, even when looking at the hyper-intensity and technical wonders of Dying Fetus and Cryptopsy, two bands that were likely familiar with either this album or some of the other handiwork of several of the people involved in it. No self-respecting adherent to death/grind should go without hearing it at least once, and it is arguably the only album with grind influences on it to own for those who aren't particularly fond of it yet have found themselves in any way interested in death metal.
