Label: Nuclear Blast Records
Release date: April 3, 2020
Production: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson & Juan Urteaga
Album length: 58.34 min
Genre: Thrash Metal
Rating: 8.5 / 10
If the world had a Big Five of thrash metal, we all know who the fifth would be. If not the first, that is, if commercial success didn’t count. The unbreakable spirit of these Bay Area thrash legends, with a lineup that (very probably) packs the five greatest musical talents going whenever the talk turns to this genre, stays unbreakable on “Titans Of Creation” too.
Testament have never made a bad album. They simply couldn’t, because they’re too good for that. The new album “Titans Of Creations”, which Testament started working on back in 2017, is exactly what you’d generally want and expect from Testament these days. It’s their twelfth studio album in 33 years, counting from the unforgettable debut “Legacy”. And the band just keeps going. In February they still managed to get through the European leg of the joint tour with Exodus and Death Angel, but once everyone got back home to the US, the trouble began. Individual members of all three bands caught the Covid-19 virus, and Death Angel drummer Will Caroll barely pulled through. Testament’s Chuck Billy and Steve DiGiorgio also tested positive, but both got through it fine.
In every respect, production and songwriting alike, “Titans Of Creation” is once again the classic Testament studio standard. It speaks to you raw and white-hot! The production is brilliant, the energy breathtaking, and the old boys still burn it down mercilessly and furiously! The guitar phrasing, backed by Gene Hoglan’s indestructible drum salvos, is bestial, utterly destructive and wrecking, and the Slovenian language simply hasn’t invented the words to describe all that unleashed rage and adrenaline rush. With its flawless production, Testament today are also the biblical multiplication table of thrash metal’s treasure chest, a band that over a long career has pushed its thrash formula to its artistic limits. Apparently this is it, and it doesn’t go any further. Even though the band releases albums very slowly, at four-year intervals, we’ll search “Titans Of Creation” in vain for anything we haven’t already heard from Testament, or for anything especially fresh, since it sounds very much like the albums “Brotherhood of the Snake” and “Dark Roots of Earth“. At the same time, it has to be said that every song here is good, and a few of them clearly stand out in quality, easily earning a flattering label like ‘really good’ or ‘excellent’.
Peterson and Skolnick remain a hellish guitar duo of the kind you can only dream about. They’re not running out of dynamite in their fingers even in 2020, and they work together seamlessly, almost telepathically. The way they trade off their shared solos keeps up an exceptional dialogue, and even today it embodies a bubbling, unbridled passion and a (studio) playfulness full of sparkle. Classic Testament theatrics and fun, which is one of the foundations of the thrash metal calling card the band stands behind, are in no short supply in what both guitarists contribute (the solos especially). Their work on this album is once again a dessert of its own kind, and to a degree a showcase of the youthful energy these two legendary guitarists still sincerely embody after more than three decades. And in spots where Testament no longer surprise with the phrases they pick, the rhythm section livens up the phrases themselves with some truly brilliant inserts and transitions, like in City of Angels, which provides enough theatrics to keep the album gripping the listener from start to finish. And if you’ve already heard a riff or two on some older Testament album from the new millennium, the guys surely redeem themselves, if not sooner, with every single mid-eight passage. Here they astonish with the wit of their stacked modulations and sudden switches, which follow one another at hellish speed, and quite simply, it’s thrilling.
If Children of the Next Level is the expected thrash metal attacker of the typical Testament recipe, grabbing you by the throat right in the album’s opening, then City Of Angels and Dream Deceiver, for example, are set up more classically in their lead phrases and reflect the influence of old-school bands like Judas Priest. But “Titans Of Creation” gets more interesting somewhere in the second half, with Ishtar’s Gate, featuring a truly penetrating and especially striking riff and ravenous rhythmic kinetics, plus a pile of turns in the lead phrases that once again embody the creative wit with which Testament have always teased the listener so pleasantly. One of the album’s best songs. The Healers and Curse Of Osiris have noticeable flecks of black metal, which is no longer news for the band either, and the closing dark instrumental Catacombs could easily be used on a black metal album too.
Given that the common language of thrash metal usually gets to the point very fast, “Titans Of Creation”, which doesn’t hide the band’s great commitment during its creation, is actually too long an album. Quite a few songs “break” the six-minute mark even though they say everything in four. The opening Children of the Next Level is one of them, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s not a big leap to realize the album wouldn’t lose anything essential in quality if it were two tracks shorter. All in all, “Titans of Creation” is definitely a very, very good and at times downright excellent album, even if Testament don’t surprise artistically with it. Fans of the band will grab it with both hands and wear out their CD players endlessly. No need to worry about that.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Tracklist:
1. Children Of The Next Level
2. WWIII
3. Dream Deceiver
4. Night Of The Witch
5. City Of Angels
6. Ishtar’s Gate
7. Symptoms
8. False Prophet
9. The Healers
10. Code Of Hammurabi
11. Curse Of Osiris
12. Catacombs
Lineup:
Chuck Billy – vocals
Alex Skolnick – guitar
Eric Peterson – guitar
Steve DiGiorgio – bass guitar
Gene Hoglan – drums
