Artist Page: Testament

While never quite reaching the same level of commercial success as Master Of Puppets, Reign in Blood and Peace Sells...But Who's Buying?, this album is just as important in the development of the genre.
Fans of guitar driven metal look no further... Alex Skolnick played some of most stunning solos in thrash metal at the time on this album, a true virtuoso that made Kirk Hammett look like a beginner.
Great songs and excellent musicianship, although the production is not great... a fairly weak mix.

Some kind of "reunion" album... seems like Testament won't do commercial thrash again, as this release is still strongly rooted in the thrash/death of their last three albums, but there are hints of the sound of their debut album The Legacy here too. Two of the historic members (Skolnick, Christian) are back, and this release is much more solid than the last two. The music is quite comparable to the Low album with strong vocals by Chuck Billy (using almost exclusively his normal voice here except on one track), but as Low was more a transitional album, this is more like a "best of" album... and much less diverse than Low, with the second half of the album being quite repetitive.

Testament reached the top of their career here. Songs are catchy as hell, and as diverse as you can get for a thrash metal band: fast, mid-paced, long, short, ballads, instrumentals... James Murphy does a great job as a replacement for Alex Skolnick and Chuck Billy has improved his voice a lot to give more diverse vocal patterns. I just regret the pointless death metal track ("Dog Faced Gods") here, which would have prefectly fit on their later releases... but really not here.