First
Strike Still Deadly Well, this album almost escaped my attention, since I was completely turned off by the death metalish endeavours of the late nineties coming from a broken up Testament. So only now, after a couple of months have I gotten my dirty hands in it. I've got to say I was fearful when I inserted it in and awaited for the first notes. Was I in for a trip down a nostalgic past, I thought to myself. The answer is, a definite yes. The pre-release promise of an oldies faithful remake was completely delivered as was the new production which is top notch. Finally people can listen to Legacy without the demotapish sound ( although Return to Apocalyptic City already provided an excellent fix ). The old themes are done in a way that doesn't offend the old recipe of Testament of the pure San Francisco Bay Area days. Here and there the lead work is slightly embellished, which surprisingly doesn't rape the original but complements it in a non-obtrusive way at the same time as providing a new twist of freshness into the tunes. Skolnick also seems to pick some notes he would before just do a legato run, which a weird step back, but quickly grows on you. The track selection is near perfect ( Apocalyptic City And Do or Die probably deserved seeing the light of the day ), as are the vocals which seem to come out of the Album Low. Even the Steve Souza's contributions are great, being a faithful flashback into pure days back in the eighties. Obviously this wouldn't be a decent review if it only mentioned the pros and avoided the cons, however, the cons are so subtle and perhaps even so connected to pure personal subjectiveness I deem them completely insignificant, but here they are. First, it seems as though the speed is slightly downed, what's up guys, getting old & tired ? Kidding aside, this is probably influenced by the nineties phase of death brutal influences as opposed to the eighties constant thirst for speed. Or maybe even lack of constantly playing together. Secondly, Chuck's vocals are pampered around with effects, this is very competently done, but as for a purist point of view thrash isn't about all that sisseness, leave that for run of the mill pop mediocrity of the day, especially when Chuck's voice needs no artificial tweaking, it's the best around the thrash scene as it is. Again, this has been a trait of the latter releases of the nineties and is definitely intentional. It's a matter of taste. Third and lastly, in some points Alex changed around some notes and tried to jazzy-up the leads, while that adds a sense of freshness into it, it robs them of some of it's edge, again this seems intentional as well. Subtle cons apart, I'd really see no point in simply playing note by note the already recorded material either, so these details are impossible to run away from in such an endeavour, as is the finished product comes up in a surprisingly great shape from it's modernisation. For what it aimed , it's perfect. If it had a better flow and the different members were clearly intertwined to perfection and back with it's full edge, it wouldn't be what it is : a great old-material-made-new album, it would be a full fledged return to the past. As is, it's scaringly close to it. This is the album that was missing in every Testament's fan collection. Pretty much a must buy. |
