Bruce's follow up to Born to Run, coming after a three year court battle with his old manager, presents a darker and not just a bit more jaded world view. His most intense and weighty album to date. Favorite tracks:

Darkness On The Edge of Town
Badlands
Candy's Room
The Promised Land

My favourite Bruce Springsteen album. Candy's Room is such an underrated track.

A dramatic shift for the Boss. The anti-Born to Run in a way. Instead of starry eyed romanticism, Bruce deals with the challenges of adult life and the sacrifices that must be made as one gets older. This is one that has grown on me as I've gotten older due to it being a more mature album. This album is very important in rock music. Its a great contrast to the standard rock mythology of drugs, sex, and partying. I think that's why people are so gravitated to Bruce's music, he relates to us in ways other rock starts simply dont(or perhaps cant). While Born to Run may be the better record, this is the quintessential Bruce album lyrically and sonically.

Bruce Springsteen at a more human level than on Born to Run. I absolutely love the songs like Factory, Racing in the Street, The Promised Land.

Great album from a secluded lifestyle in the country!

One of Bruce's finest

Took me some extra years and concerts to appreciate this album. The extra magic is not obvious, and not as frequent as on Born to run.

I'll admit it: I'm not huge on Springsteen. While "Born to Run" was pretty good, this doesn't have a huge appeal to me. I can't relate to "I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396 Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor" - although I can see how these types of lyrics have nostalgic appeal to fans of the boss. Music about old cars and shooting the shit at the pool hall w/ my buds chewing some copenhagen do little for me.

The music seems pretty conventional 70's pop and there's nothing I've heard here that wasn't in previous 70's pop records from Billy Joel / Eagles, etc. The songs all sound pretty similar to each other, after hearing an opening couplet from a song from this album it's pretty predictable what the rest of the song will sound like.

Very good album, Bruce Springsteen was really the Boss in 1978. Meanwhile, there is two imperfections :
- "Prove it all night" is his best live track (Cf. the live in Atlanta, Georgia, 1978) with an incredible introducion and progresive guitare solos by himself and a ... tremendous energy ! But the studio version is a little disappointing and suffer to the comparison with the live one.
- Bruce records the title "Because the night" during this sessions but he offered it to the Patti Smith Group. Both versions are excellent. But I still think "Darkness" should have been a masterpiece and not a very good album with the help of this track.

Best track: Adam raised a cain