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What else to expect from this Bay Area icons than that this: a top release. Their debut and the 2 latest albums are in my opinion still their best. This new release will not change that. Nevertheless, this is a great album with all the ingredients we know and love from Testament. It is melodic, with excellent solos from Skolnick and Petersen and the drums of Gene Hoglan..... do I even have to say anything about his drumming? The music on the album sounds dark, aggressive, angry, has groove and melody. There are no fillers and the songs are well written. Besides a sporadic blast beat and some ballades'k pieces the mid-tempo songs rule. In my opinion there could have been a few faster pieces more. Chuck Billy sounds very angry and aggressive, but he really impresses with his serene singing on "Cold Embrace". Every now and then, the CD reminds me of the 'Practice What You Preach' era, because of the mid-tempo songs. In fact you can conclude that the album is a kind of mix between the melodic first album (especially the solos), the two aggressive predecessors (singing style) and 'Souls in Black' and 'Practice What You Preach' (because of the tempo). Final conclusion: the new album has no surprises at all and is a mix of the band's repertoire, a very safe piece of high class thrash metal. Every fan will like the album, but personally I miss a few surprises! | ||||||||||||||||||
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