Testament the ritual zip

Album Rating: 4. Digging: Funeral Mist - Deiform. Took to this straight away back in day. Still like it now. I honestly don't find this as appealing as a lot of people.

Testament The Ritual 3. They are known for their great muciscal abilities and powerful vocals from Chuck Bill , the band is also known as Legacy when Steve Souza was the singer. The band became very famous in the 80's but during the 90's the band was starting to fade away but was still very popular in the metal underground.

The band had the former Exodus singer Steve Souza as frontman at the very first start but he joined Exodus pretty quick, it was though a bit lucky for Testament because the more powerful and melodic vocals from Chuck Billy would suit their music way more better than Souza's vocals did. And then they have ''Practice What You Preach'' , an album that showed some of their best music skills, the album material was very melodic, quite heavy and everything just sounded so catchy.

But we are about to focus on this album called ''The Ritual'' , this album has some of the classic elements from Testament , the riffage and shredding has a great variety, the sound is quite heavy, the guitar solos are excellent and the vocals sounds very good.

This album may not be a heavy hitter or a groundbreaking album but fans to this band will find this quite enjoying. The vocals in this album is very good, it might not seem as powerful and strong as in their previous work or their latest but this is good. The vocals does not feel overdone or to weak, a decent performance from Chuck I must say. The guitars are great in this album, the rhythm sections are steady, they might not seem so heavy or brutal but the guitars are well balanced.

The riffing has a good variety, the riffs are quite catchy time to time, they are a bit melodic between the songs and the shredding is equally as good. The guitar solos from Alex are excellent here, the solos are melodic, fast, some times a bit chaotic but they are quite catchy. The bass in this band has been pretty audible every time and the bass is quite good in this album.

The bass doesn't make any standout performances, it follows the rhythm guitars by Eric to make a good rhythm section. The drumming felt a bit mellow though, most of their albums has a fast pace in the drum patterns but this album the patterns were a bit slower.

The patterns had though a good variety in them and they were quite catchy and heavy in most of the songs but they felt a bit slow. One thing was that the band still had the more ''neutral'' vocal style from Chuck , in their latest work Chuck uses growling stuff and I thought it didn't fit too good with their music. Chuck uses his ''normal'' vocal style here but he also delivers a few deep growlings here and there and that made the songs more interesting.

In the end, this is a decent effort with enough to appeal to most Testament fans and other audiences too. Do you agree that Testament are great songwriters? Or do you agree that Testament compose lame and meaningless tracks?

Well, beware of traps. The inconspicuous word "or" can lead you astray. The truth is that people who see things correctly me, for example Or - this word again! It doesn't matter. However, "The Ritual" is prone to lameness. High speed attacks do not appear, the band prefers the velocity of an 80 year old grandpa who needs a walker.

Adding insult to injury, the mix of the album avoids edges and corners. The songs are as smooth as freshly pressed laundry. Nevertheless, the production achieves a solid level of power and volume. And, by the way, I guess nobody expected an underground sound. The demarcation line runs between the highly atmospheric title track and "Deadline".

The only exception is constituted by "Agony", a powerful, more or less combative thrasher which is placed on the eighth position. Its chorus keeps sticking in the mind and the other highlights do not overburden the listener as well. The anthemic chorus of the stomping "Electric Crown" crowns a song with a flashy riff at the beginning and an outstanding flow. Testament have almost always outstanding openers, but it seems as if they are not able to put ten first-class songs on an album.

Usually, they exhaust their resources relatively quickly. Thus, let's celebrate the good songs of "The Ritual" all the more. The thick riffing of "So Many Lies" has its charm and the chorus presents another example for their talent to pen a sustainable, strong melody that enters the listener's long-term memory without hesitation.

More or less the same applies for "Let Go Off My World" which moves less cumbersome than its predecessor. Finally, I have already mentioned the title track. Its gloomy mood liaises with great, robust riffs and the lyrics match perfectly with the musical content. Its guitar solo is unfortunately weak, but the remaining parts create really impressive sounds.

The audience almost becomes a part of this diabolic ritual. So far, so good, but the further tracks deliver nothing but uninspired riffs, half-baked melodies and the total absence of dedication.

A kitschy ballad, of course, must be integrated. Okay, medicine usually tastes bitter and this piece sounds saccharine, but who cares about this little difference? This sedative aside, the other songs follow the route of the better tracks in terms of style, but they do not really convince "As the Seasons Grey" or they fall completely through the net "Troubled Dreams" and the never changing mid-tempo does not only endanger any kind of dynamic.

It also appears as an indicator for the fact that the band is running steadily out of ideas. A last alternative: you want to have the complete discography of Testament on your shelf? Buy this album. Or - this word is the star of this review - do you want to listen to thrash metal without abrasion? This is a pretty lousy album. Compared to their first four, this is baffling in its lousiness.

There is one great song, a couple of listenable songs, and so many boring songs. The band members themselves are mostly on task, though a couple of areas slide somewhat.

Compared to their rivals, Testament wasn't super varied or excellent in their riffing. This is far worse than previously. The ballads and more almost-ballad songs all seem to work on a variation of the same riff. This riff isn't very good to begin with, so it ages on you pretty quickly. There have been quite a few bands make good use of the slower thrash formula. Hallow's Eve was fairly mid-paced, yet they were also pretty enjoyable. This really isn't anywhere near this. Also, this is slower on the whole than was usual, even for slower thrash.

This is actually somewhat difficult to distinguish between the ballads and the almost-ballads. This adds to the monotony that the riffing creates. Chuck Billy is a great thrash vocalist. He just doesn't do a great job on here.

For the most part, he's singing in the same style for almost every style. To start with, it wasn't his best vocal styling.

I'm not a big fan of his ballad voice, and hearing it for the majority of a fifty-five minute stretch is very boring. On the few moments where the music gains a little steam, he is great again.

He does have a very good aggressive voice, but he doesn't get to use it very often on this album. The one song where neither of these two are a problem is Electric Crown.

It is a great song, probably one of the ten or so best songs this band has had. The riff is actually pretty good and Chuck's vocals work great on this song. As to the listenable, Seasons Grey and Agony are okay. None of these three are particularly good, but they don't fail as miserably as the rest of these songs. Pretty much everything else really does fail, as boring as this band could make it.

The rest of band does an okay job. The soloing is still great, but it just can't fix the major problems found throughout this album. Skolnick left after this album. If it had been for as awful as this was, I would understand completely.

Apparently, he wanted them to change their style completely to more of a pop direction. I don't really see how he thought that would be a good idea, as I don't believe Testament would have worked in a more pop area. The rhythm section was alright on this album, but nothing special. The bass doesn't have his usual moments, but often he's hard to hear on their albums anyways.

The drumming is pretty standard, but I'm not very bothered by that. At this speed, drumming isn't usually very noteworthy.

This is just an awful listen. There's five and a half great minutes, ten and a half minutes of tolerable, and thirty-nine and a half minutes of just miserable to get through. This got them higher on the charts, good for them. I don't really know who this would appeal to, as this is pretty boring by a thrash or early metal standard. I don't even see why a Testament fan would want this. I would recommend a fan of either of those two sub-genres to rip Electric Crown, and forget the rest.

Like many other listeners, my initial reaction to Testament's 'dumbing down' was one of shock and confusion, concerns that the band was attempting to ape the enormous success Metallica had with their own simplified, streamlined record The Black Album.

No way man, another of my favorite West Coast thrash bands sold itself down the river! Sure, there were a few catchy tracks from the onset of exposure to this record, like the massive opener "Electric Crown" or the strangely uplifting "Agony", but for whatever reason, I found that at the time, this just wasn't what I was interested in hearing. I had been on a death metal binge for a few years, and black metal as we know it was just starting to become available through imports , not to mention the other sounds like grunge, rap and 'alternative' which peaked at the dawn of the 90s.

But I was wrong, and I've spent the past 20 years repenting just HOW wrong, because over time, I've not only grown to love this beast, but it's become my absolute favorite of their full-lengths to date. An opinion, that, to the thrash purist, must be like attempting to practice witchcraft at a Puritan prayer club; but I don't spend hours listening and typing these reviews out to lie, people. Even if you've never trusted my word on anything else, or burn wicker statues of me on your front lawn, I'd implore detractors of this record to set the proper mood, and give The Ritual another chance, because it's one of the truly underrated works of those parched early 90s, where quality metal was a rarity more than a commodity.

Yeah, it existed if you knew where to find it, but the likelihood of picking up even a major band's new record and coming out satisfied were pretty slim. So if you seek this more atmospheric, 'heavy metal' incarnation of Testament, there is but one place to turn Thankfully, that place is still open and ready for your business.

This album never grows old, a result of the simple and focused songwriting, immortal chorus melodies and raucous, airy guitar tone. Although one could still discern a 'thrash' element to the riffing, thanks to the heavy use of palm mutes, The Ritual has more in line with a mainstream heavy metal sound. Like The Black Album, or perhaps doom royalty Trouble's Manic Frustration another unsung, excellent record from this same year.

Essentially, they decided to peel back the years and return to the roots of what made them interested in metal, and thus the compositions feel just as Deep Purple as they do Master of Puppets. Don't get me wrong, the boxcar tone of the guitars is heavy as balls, and there is plenty to bang your head or fists at, but The Ritual is so suffused with vocal echoes, reverb and beautiful, blues-born leads and melodies that it's built more for a road trip than a mosh pit.

Seriously, whether you're behind the helm of an wheeler of your mother's station wagon, this thing is the perfect accompaniment to a long highway or back-road trek, capable of making the journey just as emotionally resonant as the destination.

One of the reasons I've been able to continually connect to it and enjoy it for such a long time. This is not so much an album of nuance or innovation, but one of an 'alternate history'. Like a novel by Harry Turtledove, it answers its 'what if' scenario in style. Just the production on The Ritual alone breeds subtleties that fasten themselves to the ear and heart with each exposure, and what initially was a mild reception to just a handful of tracks has blossomed into a love of nearly every moment of the record.

The one exception might be the closer "Troubled Dreams", which I often forget is even there, but it still fits the aesthetics of this sound rather well, its riffing structures a nod to the band's past.

Even the power ballads on this crush their wimpier predecessors like "The Ballad" or "The Legacy"; the sultry, evocative mix and the superior vocals seem so much more heartfelt.

Testament wrote those tracks to get on the radio, or to get laid, but they wrote these for dudes deep in their cups at the local bar, wondering where the next paycheck will come from. In particular, "Return to Serenity" is memorable, with its glossed cleans, distant hovering micro-leads and then a build-up with reminds me of the drama present in Megadeth's "In My Darkest Hour", with Billy clearly meting out a stronger performance than their earlier lighter-swaying fare.

Eric Peterson. Alex Skolnick. Greg Christian. Louie Clemente. Tony Platt. Nigel Green. Ulrich Wild. Sarah Bedingham. George Marino R. William Benson. Don Brautigan. Mark Leialoha. Bob Defrin. Larry Freemantle. Del James.