HISTORY
Testamen ruled the Bay-Area scene along with thrash veterans as
Exodus. Other successful bands like
Heathen,
Death Angel and
Vio-Lence among others did also made high-quality thrash-metal but they didn't made such impacts as the two giants did.
Testament became very popular because of their abilities to create catchy and technical guitar work and becuase of
Chuck Billy's quite long-ranged vocal style. The band started out with speedy tech-thrash with themes directed towards the other side, not the same area as
Slayer sings about but pretty close though. The band got more technical and melodic and their pace started to get a bit slower with the time. Then they became more like a death-metal when the band really lowered their tempo and
Chuck started to deliver deep growls, the band became the opposite to their past music style. But the band is still active and they are still very popular especially in the metal underground scene.
ALBUM INFORMATION
This album that I'm about to review is called
ยจ''Demonic'', this album is probably the bands heaviest and darkest albums yet. Their other two heavy classic albums
''New World Order'' and
''Practice What You Preach'' is nothing compared to this heavy hitter. This album is quite slow in its material, the vocals are deep demonic growls mixed with ultra-low singing, the guitar work is heavy and quite slow too in most of the songs. Just make sure that you blast up your volume on your stereo to get the best effect out of this album.
THE BAND MEMBERS
This was not the ''classic'' line-up of
Testament, in this album there are just two original members and on of them is
Chuck Billy the vocalist. His performance in this album is though very good, he does a great job to deliver these hellish deep growls, imagine that he has blood in his throat while he is singing, very good growls.
Eric Peterson is the second original member and he is the rhythm guitarist, his guitar work is great, the riffage and shredding is heavy, quite thick and catchy most of the times. The guitars feels a bit blury or mashed, hard to describe though but I think you know what I mean.
Glen Alvelais (former
Forbidden member) is the lead guitarist here, he does a good job too. The guitar solos are good quality solos but they don't match the excellent guitar work as
Alex Skolnick is capable of, anyway he does his part good in this album.
Derek Ramirez is the bassist here, not a bad bassist but the bass is not so well-heard. The only time when you can here the bass as a clear instrument is when he does an intro to one of the songs.
Ramirez follows the rhythm guitars and helps to build a steady rhythm section. And what do we have here,
Gene Hoglan the drum monster. Former member of bands like
Dark Angel,
Death and
Old Man's Child among others is the drummer here, but don't think that you will have monster drumming in this album. This was the ''calmest'' performance from
Gene that I have heard yet, the patterns are slow but yet pretty heavy and catchy. But he does a good job, but I you thought it was going to be fast machine-gun drumming here I'm afriad to make you disappointed becuase this was calm drumming.
MY POSITIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
I really dig this band but that is just because of their previous albums that reaches from their first called
''The Legacy'' and till
''The Ritual''. The band started go get more extreme and I didn't really liked that but this album had a few hooks that got me pretty good. The vocals was one thing that I thought was great, from ultra-low grunting to deep demonic growling.
Chuck is one of my favorite metal singers becuase of his vocal range, this vocal style made this album very evil and brutal in its sound and it became a pretty cool contrast to their previous work. Another thing I thought was pretty good was that not every song was slow, songs like
Murky Waters,
Jun-Jun and
Hatreds Rise were songs that had a good fast tempo with catchy guitar work and had both vocal styles that I mentioned before. The variety among the songs didn't bore you so much and the album as a whole was a pretty interesting piece of slow and brutal thrash.
MY NEGATIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
There was also a few bad things about album though, I thought that most of the material was a bit repetitive. Some songs felt similar to other songs, mostly because of the song patterns. I think also that the amount of riffs had a bit poor variety, there was though some catchy songs and catchy sections in some of the songs but there was no big contrast between the riffs. The only thing left was the album cover, not a big deal though but I think if they have put a bit more enthusiasm to the art cover the more interesting would the album have been.
MY CONCLUSION
Not my favorite
Testament albim but I got into it pretty good, some songs here were great while other songs were more uninteresting. This brutal sound was a pretty cool contrast to their earlier work but I prefer their old stuff rather than this. I think that only dedicated fans or serious metal heads would enjoy this, death-metal people could have a look at this album becuase of the deep growling vocals and the brutal and heavy overall sound. This is not an album for ''newcomers'', if you are looking for a good
Testament-experience you should look at the bands five first albums.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- Jun-Jun
-- Murky Waters
-- Hatreds Rise
I didn't enjoy their ''new'' sound as much as their older sound so this album will get a 3/5
