First Strike Still Deadly

I won’t be doing the verdict scores for this one because it’s all old stuff. I’m not really gonna talk about the songs themselves since you can just see my previous reviews for all that. With that being said, it’s not always about how the songs are written, it’s about the way they’re played, take Nirvana for example, their songwriting is shitty and simple, but the way they play those songs is what makes them special. This record is pretty much Testament’s greatest hits compilation, but re-recorded and completely butchered. First of all, if you’re going to put Over The Wall on any album whatsoever, it has to be the opening track. That’s just a fact of life, Over the Wall can never not be the opener under any circumstances, and Testament broke that rule. Into the Pit just doesn’t have the oomph the original had, Alone in the Dark is ruined by Billy’s aged vocals. The drop D tuning also ruins the entire album for me personally.

Almost every track is ruined by the tuning. The sad truth is that these songs were just simply written to be played in E standard, that was what made early Testament so bombastic and out of this world, coupled with the unique use of reverb that is completely absent on this re-recording, and the consequence of this is that is sounds very dry and misplaced in parts, Testament tried to adapt their classic run on songs to modern times, but the whole point of early Testament songs is that they're supposed to sound 80's, so why bother to make old songs sound modern when that completely juxtaposes the intention of the songs?

Also, everything is so processed, the greatness of the first few Testament records was partially created by the raw yet dynamic atmosphere, which is seldom presented here. You can really tell on songs like The Haunting, which can I just say, is played so slowly and sloppily compared to the original, that it’s barely unrecognisable. Burnt Offerings, which is my favourite Testament song, and an absolute thrash masterpiece, is dissected on this record, like come on, what the fuck is that intro? The shitty tuning makes the acoustic arpeggios sound completely different, and instead of playing the intro on the guitar with a synth effect like the original, they just scrap that and play the intro solo on a keyboard, which is fucking ridiculous. It may sound like I’m overreacting, but just listen to this and you’ll get what I mean. Every song has to be played slower for the band to keep up, and I get it, 45 year olds will never be able to play as well as 20 year olds, but they should’ve at least put more effort into it. This genuinely sounds like a Testament Karaoke backing track compilation. So yeah, great songs, Awful playing. Buy the original albums instead.