Album Review: Testament - Titans Of Creation

Testament can be taken one of two ways. You can see their wandering evolution as the natural process of a band exploring their ever-shifting taste, or you can see their changes in style as attempts to pander to whatever they thought the masses wanted from them at any given moment. They essentially became a death metal band when thrash was at its lowest, then went back to old-school thrashing when nostalgia for that genre was rising. It could have been natural, but man does that timing look too coincidental. So that leaves me wondering where they go now that the thrash revival is slowing down, and there isn't really any big trend to hop on.

Out of the gates, the band comes out with plenty of anger and aggression. "Children Of The Next Level" has the old thrash bounce to it, with nary an ounce of melody, as Chuck Billy goes from aggressive to even more aggressive with his vocals. It's six minutes of pounding, yelling, without a lot beyond heaviness to say for it. "WW III" is even faster-paced, trying to blitzkrieg us. There's an odd bit where the riff starts with just one guitar, and before the second one comes in, the tone is so washed out I couldn't even make out what was being played. That was weird, but not as annoying as their syntax. I'm not sure why, but not spelling out 'world war' bothers me.

Moving deeper into the record, the band doesn't let up one bit. "Dream Deceiver" and "Night Of The Witch" continue pile-driving thrash riffs into our heads, while Chuck runs the gamut of what he can do vocally. The thing is that it becomes less effective the more they do it. One ripping thrasher makes a statement, but a string of them in a row dilutes the impact as they blend together. The only real difference between the songs is whether Chuck throws in a deep growl or a high scream as coloring. That's not very interesting to me.

"City Of Angels" is another puzzling song. The soft intro is a needed break, but it goes through a heavy verse as expected, which is fine. Then the chorus hits, and Chuck is whispering his way through it. There's no power to it, and any melody is ruined by the weak delivery that could be interpreted as them not caring about the subject matter of the song. Chuck's a good enough clean singer that he could have easily crooned something that would have still been softer than his usual delivery, but not so flaccid.

And then there's the elephant in the room. This record is nearly an hour long, which given their focus on being aggressive, grows old very quickly. Not only were thrash albums shorter in the classic days, but they quite often weren't even what we would call thrash today. Almost no one was putting out solid hours of pure aggression, and for good reason. It's too much, and few of the songs are unique enough to stand out from the others. I can only be yelled at by Chuck for so long before I'm ready to give up.

"Titans Of Creation" is a very trying album, unless you're already a thrash die-hard. You could describe it as punishing, because I did feel like I was being punished having to sit through the whole thing. I am not an angry enough person to enjoy being pummeled like this for so long, and I honestly feel a bit worried for the people who are.