HISTORY
They come from the Bay-Area along with other successful bands like
Exodus,
Heathen and
Vio-lence, but it was
Testament who became one of the founding fathers of the Bay-Area thrash-movement during the 80's. They are known for their great muciscal abilities and powerful vocals from
Chuck Bill, the band is also known as
Legacy when
Steve Souza was the singer. The band became very famous in the 80's but during the 90's the band was starting to fade away but was still very popular in the metal underground. The band had the former
Exodus singer
Steve Souza as frontman at the very first start but he joined
Exodus pretty quick, it was though a bit lucky for
Testament because the more powerful and melodic vocals from
Chuck Billy would suit their music way more better than
Souza's vocals did.
ALBUM INFORMATION
[b[Testament[/b] had the same platform sound in all of their albums but some of them were more melodic or thrashier than others, the album
''The Legacy'' showed more classic thrash-metal which was heavy, fast and quite technical.
''New World Order'' displayed even heavier material which was more occult and spooky but it was yet very heavy and catchy. And then they have
''Practice What You Preach'', an album that showed some of their best music skills, the album material was very melodic, quite heavy and everything just sounded so catchy. But we are about to focus on this album called
''The Ritual'', this album has some of the classic elements from
Testament, the riffage and shredding has a great variety, the sound is quite heavy, the guitar solos are excellent and the vocals sounds very good. This album may not be a heavy hitter or a groundbreaking album but fans to this band will find this quite enjoying.
THE BAND MEMBERS
The band members who made this fine album were
Chuck Billy as the vocalist,
Eric Peterson and
Alex Skolnick as the two guitarists,
Greg Christian as the bassist and
Louie Clemente as the drummer. The vocals in this album is very good, it might not seem as powerful and strong as in their previous work or their latest but this is good. The vocals does not feel overdone or to weak, a decent performance from
Chuck I must say. The guitars are great in this album, the rhythm sections are steady, they might not seem so heavy or brutal but the guitars are well balanced. The riffing has a good variety, the riffs are quite catchy time to time, they are a bit melodic between the songs and the shredding is equally as good. The guitar solos from
Alex are excellent here, the solos are melodic, fast, some times a bit chaotic but they are quite catchy. The bass in this band has been pretty audible every time and the bass is quite good in this album. The bass doesn't make any standout performances, it follows the rhythm guitars by
Eric to make a good rhythm section. The drumming felt a bit mellow though, most of their albums has a fast pace in the drum patterns but this album the patterns were a bit slower. The patterns had though a good variety in them and they were quite catchy and heavy in most of the songs but they felt a bit slow.
MY POSITIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
I am a fan of
Testament's work so this had a few goodies that hooked my pretty good. One thing was that the band still had the more ''neutral'' vocal style from
Chuck, in their latest work
Chuck uses growling stuff and I thought it didn't fit too good with their music.
Chuck uses his ''normal'' vocal style here but he also delivers a few deep growlings here and there and that made the songs more interesting. The riffing and shredding was also a thing I liked, there were no signs of fatigue or softness in the guitar work. THe songs were catchy from time to time a none of the songs were dead-on boring if I say so. The band did also have a good variety in their material, there was both fast and heavy songs like
Agony and there was slow and very melodic songs like the ballad
Return To Serenity. The material wasen't the ''same deal'' in every song, every song had their own sound and structure.
MY NEGATIVE THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
I didn't had so many complains about this album to be honest, the only major thing I felt was bad was the energy in the songs. There was no real fire in the material, the material felt a bit lazy. If the band would've added some more speed and engery in the songs it would've been much better, the album would've been more enjoyable in my opinion. I can though admit that there was a little lazy-warning in the vocals too, the real
Testament fire did not emerge as much as in their previous albums.
MY CONCLUSION
And now we are done, I thought that this was a pretty good album, not one of my favorites but it hooked me quite good. There album felt like good old
Testament, there was no signs of mainstream influences or something like that. The overall sound was quite heavy, the musicianship was great and the vocals worked out just fine, but there was the true spirit of
Testament which was missing here. I would recommend this to
Testament fans and thrash-metal fans as well, but if you want more speed and fire in the songs you might cheack out the bands earliest material instead of this. Now I'm done for this time so I hope this has been a good review and I thank you for taking time to read it.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- Agony
-- Electric Crown
-- Return To Serenity
I thought that this album was pretty good but it was not excellent and the overall album rating will be: 3.5/5
