First Strike Still Deadly

The concept behind this album is a clever one: how much better would Testament's early albums sound if they actually had halfway decent production? This is something that I have been wondering myself; I had always thought that people dismissed Testament's work merely for the production, even though said detractors would probably blame it on some aesthetic aspect of the album. When I first learned of the existence of this album, I dismissed it as a money-grab. It wasn't until I was more knowledgeable about music and thrash in general that I decided to once again listen to the old albums. It was then I realized how weak the rhythm guitar sounded on every album up until "Low," and noticed the terrible lead guitar tone on "The New Order."

All of the sudden this album emerged as a must-have for me. I had always liked Testament, and it intrigued me as to how good they could be with a modern sound. It wasn't like a bunch of new members were re-recording old material; in fact, original vocalist Steve Souza of Exodus was brought in for a couple of songs (he was the vocalist back when the band was known as "Legacy"). The result is a new take on "Alone in the Dark" which is much better than one might expect. Souza doesn't necessarily give a better performance than Chuck Billy did on the original version, but merely a different one, his vocals add a sort of intensity to the song, replacing Billy's more melodic take.

Sadly, the rest of the album is nowhere near as good as I was hoping. The songs lack the passion of the originals; instead of a young group of kids showing what they have, they sound like a bunch of kids playing a piece at their piano recital. They are merely playing the notes without making any effort to add that extra "oomph" which made the original recordings so delectable. Alex Skolnick no longer seems to want to prove to the world that he is the best shredder out there, and he also uses this jazzy guitar tone that doesn't fit the music at all. Eric Peterson's riffing seems to be slower and less..."heavy." Granted, "heavy" is a subjective term, but when I hear those awesome riffs for "The New Order" and "Trial by Fire," I don't want to stand up and rock out. I want to sit down in a chair, pick up a Wall Street Journal, and sip green tea. The whole point of this album was for me to be able to rock out more to these songs, not make me lethargic.

Really, there's no reason to purchase this album, at all. The somewhat better production is canceled out by the fact that, aside from the Souza songs, the new versions really aren't worth listening to. Although I wouldn't go far enough to suggest that this should only be played in dentists' waiting rooms, it certainly doesn't belong in a car stereo being played at high speeds, either. The highest purpose that this album can serve is as a novelty. Listening to this would have given me doubts as to how intense the band's forthcoming studio album will be, but their amazing "Live in London" CD silenced those fears. The best approach to this album is just to pretend that it never got released.