HISTORY
They came from the Bay-Area, they had great music abilities and a singer with better vocals than any other Bay-Area thrash-metal bands. This band is known as
Testament, one of the greatest veteran thrash giants of all time alongside with
Exodus. They started with the former
Exodus singer
Steve Souza himself, but
Steve left the band and joined
Exodus instead, this proved to be an actual success for
Testament (or
Legacy as they were called back then), because
Chuck Billy proved to be a much better vocalist for the band. Thanks to
Chuck's long ranged vocals
Testament was on the road, they delivered heavy and fast thrash-metal of the finest quality. But
Chuck became a victim for the cancer for a while but he stuggled on and the band is still active to this day.
Testament did have alot of skilled and talented musicians in their career, like
Paul Bostaph,
Gene Hoglan,
James Murphy,
Steve DiGiorgio and many other members, all of them were and still are active in many successful bands. Members of
Slayer,
Exodus,
Death,
Dragonlord and many other bands has been helping this band to reach top status.
ALBUM INFORMATION
Well what do we have here, many of you might have heard songs from some of their finest albums like
''New World Order'' or
''The Legacy'' and thought that those albums were heavy. Just wait when you hear this, this album is called
''Low'', an album that would sound more like a death-metal album (almost). The band has made a great mix of past versus future, they have taken their ''original'' sound and mixed it with more heavier and rawer material and the result became more heavier than their older music recipe. This album is very heavy in its sound, dark vocal work and deep growling is included alongside heavier and somewhat slower song patterns.
BAND MEMBERS
After their successful thrash launch during the 80's the classic line-up started to fall apart, but there has been at least two original members in the band all the time. The first member is of course the might
Chuck Billy and his vocals, he does a great work on this album. He uses both his normal and powerful vocals and his new vocal style which is deeper and more evil,
Chuck delivers now dense and deep growls here. Take songs like
Dog Faced Dogs and
Legions (In Hiding), here you can find some great vocal work were the vocals are deep and powerful.
Eric Peterson is the second member who has been alongside
Chuck since the beginning,
Eric does the rhythm sections in this album. The guitar work is heavy, thick and still skillfully performed, there are both solid shredding in many of the songs. Though the guitar might seem a little bit less complicated if you compare them to their earlier albums but this is great stuff.
James Murphy is the new lead guitarist in this album, not as skilled as
Alex Skolnick but he delivers some newer sounds and guitar work and it sounds good. The solos are not as advanced and melodic as
Skolnick's but they sound good though, nothing lame or too complicated stuff.
John Tempesta is also a new member here, a very good drummer who knows how to handle the drumsticks.
Tempesta's drumming has a very good variety, from slow and light ballad-drumming to furies thrash drumming. The drum patterns are very catchy and heavy at the same time, very good drummer here I must say.
MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS ALBUM
This was definitely a good piece of entertainment, one thing I really liked was the vocal performance in this material.
Chuck has a very good singing voice. He sings very calm and gently in songs like
Trail Of Tears, his more neutral or normal vocals appear in songs like
Hail Mary and
Shades of War, and his growling appears in songs like
Dog Faced Dogs. The band has done a great job when it came to the variety in the material, there are these fast and shredding songs, slow and very heavy pounding songs and at last the calm and melodic ballad. There was also an instrumental songs here that focused more on the bass, that song is called
Urotsukidoji, a quite ok song but you can hear that the bass has similarities with
Cliff Burton's or
Jason Newsted's type of solo style. Some things I didn't like was the last song called
Last Call, also an instrumental song but this one was just repeating itslef. The structre was all the same until it ended, boring ''outro'' song. There was not so many things that I disliked about this album, the only thing I missed was the technical and melodic riffage and soloing, if there was a little bit more fire and energy in this album it would've beena nearly perfect album in my opinion.
MY CONCLUSION
This was a nearly great album to me, it had almost all perks that I like from
Testament, the only things I missed in this album was the real energy and fire that the band had in their earlier albums. The vocals were great, the overall sound was heavier than the previous albums and I enjoyed more than half of the songs. If you are a
Testament fan you should check this one out, this album might not be a good start for those who are interested to get into this band. Most because of the heavy and aggressive sound and because of the death-metal vocals, but you are welcome to check it out anyway though. So now we are done for this time, I hope that you had a good time reading and you are most welcome to send me your comments.
RECOMMENDED TRACKS
-- Shades Of War
-- Hail Mary
-- Ride
-- Low
Because of the excellent mix between old and new, this album will be given a 4/5
