Published on Jun 3, 1999
If there’s any heavy metal band that really deserves special
recognition for toughing it out without sacrificing their vision or
style, it would be Bay-area rockers Testament. With their frontman
Chuck Billy guiding the band through several line-up changes (and,
recently, through a few different labels), the band has defied the
pronouncement of metal’s death earlier this decade and have kept
releasing albums that haven’t strayed far from their roots.
With the upcoming release of their latest album
The Gathering (which is scneduled for release on June 8),
Testament delivers another solid effort that shows their dedication
to their craft – but still falls a little shy of the highwater mark
of such albums as
The Ritual.
(One note to my readers: I’m working off an advance copy of the
disc. The track listing for this disc on CDNow shows the disc to
have 12 tracks; my copy has 11. If, when it comes out, you wonder
why I didn’t talk about “Hatred Divine” in this review, it’s
because it’s not on my copy.)
The band – Billy, guitarists Eric Peterson and James Murphy (who
seems to be on everything involving a heavier guitar sound these
days), bassist Steve DiGiorgio and former Slayer drummer Dave
Lombardo – still have an intensity level that could bubble the
paint on a new car. Lombardo’s frantic double-bass work (which
hasn’t slowed down a beat, by the way) seems to be the perfect
match for this band, and it gives the music – which has never had a
problem with power – a new lease on life.
What is interesting, though, is Billy’s approach to the vocals.
Granted, on recent releases like
Demonic he’s gone towards more of a death-metal style of
vocals. On
The Gathering, he seems to want to give equal time to the
death-metal growls and more plaintive singing (as heard on tracks
like “Down For Life”). It’s just my personal preference, but I
wonder why Billy would want to hide behind the guttural growls when
he has one of the better singing voices for a band of this
style.
The guitar work of Peterson and Murphy is outstanding, though I
often found myself hoping that they’d launch into some classic
guitar pyrotechnics. Instead, they choose to let their solos be
more substance than style – and, again, this is a matter of
personal preference. Though I’ve often said it doesn’t matter how
fast a guitarist plays, sometimes the mood and the moment all but
beg for the controls to be turned to full shred.
Tracks like “DNR (Do Not Resuscitate)”, “True Believer,”
“Legions Of The Dead” and “Sewn Shut Eyes” all prove that Testament
has continued to improve as a band since their debut on the scene –
but they have yet to equal their finest moment, which I happened to
think was
The Ritual. This is, by no means, saying that
The Gathering is bad; any album that gets my three-year-old
prancing around with her toy guitar and annoys her mother at the
same time is great in my book. But it’s almost like Testament have
found themselves trying to top their best work, and while they’ve
come close (as on this album), they still have fallen a little
short.
This isn’t something that Testament should be seriously
concerned about, at this point. After all,
The Gathering is another collection of well written and
executed songs, and they have kept something that not a lot of
metal bands from the same period can claim: their dignity.