Brotherhood of the Snake

This is an extremely worthless album. I'll be the first to admit I'm not familiar with Testament's old material, so this review won't address that stuff or their worth as a band – just the supreme suckiness of Brotherhood Of The Snake. I get that it's tough for older bands to stay relevant sometimes, as especially thrash bands usually expend their best work on their earliest albums, with the genre's focus being so much on youthful vigor and aggression. But honestly, this is a garbage album, just utter pig slop.

This is shiny, clean, Andy Sneap-produced thrash with zero surprises, a lack of any nuance and no really catchy songs. It's aggressive and well played, but that's about all it is. The songwriting is strictly deficient, with every song just chugging along with generic, vanilla riffs you've heard a thousand times before, only played here with little actual energy and in the most predictable ways possible. Chuck Billy's vocals are utterly banal, a faux-gritty sneer with a really irritating timbre to them, and he doesn't really emote or sing any good vocal lines on here, just sticking the whole time to that constipated half-growl. Just so fucking awful.

Honestly, there's barely anything to say about this album – all the songs are near-identical, with the only variance being between a midpaced chug and a slightly faster midpace. The writing is so utterly cliché – it's like the stuff a cheap movie producer would order a hungover intern to find to put in the background of an action movie so they can avoid paying a real band. There are no good hooks and no moments where the band actually injects something to make a song stand out – no melodic passages or clever turns that would make the songs even slightly different from one another or worth hearing at all. Just the bare minimum for a metal song – tired, contrite thrashy riffs you've heard a thousand times over, with shitty barking vocals overtop.

I've never been so bored when listening to something that should be blood-pumping and exciting. But this seriously is just so bereft of anything interesting. It's music that seems annoyingly glib and content with being mediocre. This isn't very extreme in terms of speed or heaviness, but it also has a lack of any catchy choruses or memorable riff sets. Instead it's just kind of there, like the proverbial lump on the couch of heavy metal. Isn't this sort of music supposed to be rebellious, standoffish, loud and proud? Brotherhood Of The Snake is the literal antithesis of that. The production alone, even without taking the music into account, is proof enough – it's utterly soulless, polished and sterile. No risks taken, nothing that actually grabs the ear. It's metal elevator music.

I hate to pigeonhole the fans of anything into one stereotype, but six years ago, I said Testament's Formation Of Damnation was “music for stupid people.” I could easily denounce that as a hasty and rude generalization made by a much younger me, but I don't feel like it. Instead, I'll say that THIS album is music for people who comment on YouTube videos with “You say Justin Bieber, I say Metallica” comments. It's crap that has no merit aside from being metal, which should not be a merit in and of itself. Not to disparage you if that's all you want from music – like what you want. Maybe you'll like this if you really love generic thrash. But if you want anything interesting, creative, ear-catching or complex, Testament isn't for you.

I guess if I had to say anything positive... at least it's not a Megadeth album? Yeah, let's go with that.