Low

As the music industry in the early nineties would shakeup up the artistic landscape, at least in the public eye, so did Testament go through their own changes and “shake ups” with the release of their sixth record, “Low”. After the fairly successful release of “The Ritual”, an album that I’ve already dived in before on here, besides the change from their speedy thrash metal (and technical at times) roots to a more simplified heavy metal and rock route, the biggest change to Testament as a whole was the loss of core band members from the classic line-up. Both guitar wiz Alex Skolnick and sturdy handed Louie Clemente left the band shortly after “The Ritual” was released, citing their own personal ventures to embark on. That only left the band with Chuck, Greg, and Eric respectively. Luckily for them the band did snag some really good talent for this record with James Murphy, best known for his time in Death, Cancer, and Obituary, on lead guitar and John Tempesta, best known for his time on Exodus, White Zombie, and Rob Zombie, on the drums. With the lineup shakeup, it ushered in a new era for the band, far more experimental than before.

Testament redials the aggression that felt softened on the previous record but what used to be a purely melodic-thrash assault is filled in with this mix of thrash metal, groove metal, hints of progressive structures, and elements of death metal in chucks vocals. Chuck himself sounds reinvigorated as he incorporates some death metal influenced vocals and growls in places throughout the album, something that he would expand upon to a greater intensity with their next release. I’ve personally found Chuck to have stagnated vocally a little bit between “Practice What You Preach” and “The Ritual'' but in “Low” he sounds much more fresh to me, though the bands first two records are still my favorite out of all of his performances with Testament. I would bet that James’s time with the band had a great effect with the incorporation of death metal influences in the fabric of the music. But Chuck isn’t just completely barks, growles, and yells as he puts on his most well refined and emotive performance to date in the grooving ballad “Trail Of Tears”. If I had to say which of Testaments handful of ballads Chuck nailed it would be “Trail Of Tears”; vocally he gets the emotion down to a point, being able to go between the more depressive clear vocals when the song is quite and emotive and turning on the switch to a more aggressive style when, you got it, the music gets aggressive.

But one thing about “Low” is the handful of catchy hooks present throughout. Eric has always had a knack for writing strong riffs, let alone being a very strong rhythmic guitarist in his own right, but the combination between his honed in ear for rhythm and Alex’s melodic and classically influenced leads was a one - two power combo. While James as a guitarist doesn’t take over that spot for that type of style, James injects pummeling grooves into the main leads that still works well with Eric’s rhythms, though I don’t think it completely fills the hole left by Alex. Tracks like “Legions (In Hiding)”, “Dog Faced Gods”, and “Hail Mary” feature James’s style well while the fairly technical, funky, and experimental instrumental “Urotdukidōji” sounds like something straight from his solo material. And speaking of that funky instrumental, Greg is an absolute beast on the bass in that song, along with being solid on the whole of the record. John also adds some technical finesse with his drumming that hasn’t really been as present before, nothing against you Louie. It’s just much more heavier and brutal and John goes wild in places, such as “All I Could Bleed” or “Ride”.

What really helps ring in that brutal sound and feel is the production. As a whole, the album reaches into a heavier production job, with the guitars being more down tuned, resulting with a heavier and distorted sound and the drumming rings with pounding rhythms. The bass is noticeable though I’d personally prefer it being more upfront and Chuck is exactly at the level he should be. The choice of integrating other elements into their sound, noticeably groove metal, lends credit to that “heavy as hell” aura “Low” has over its head. Speaking of its groove metal incorporation, I think this choice of experimentation was both a good and bad thing. The good thing is that a good portion of the songs, while slow, have some well thought groove riffing and some technical riffs helping keep the song structures interesting.

The bad is that some songs feel too simple at times, namely songs like the title track, “P.C.”, “Chasing Fear”, and “Legions (In Hiding)”. Another thing to note is that, while the album holds a pretty standout ballad, the experimental “Urotdukidōji”, and the soft groovy flowing instrumental “Last Call” as the last track, the rest of the album can be divided between your thrashier tinged groovers (“Dog Faced Gods”, “Urotdukidōji”, “All I Could Bleed”, and “Ride”) and the down right “jump-dah-fuck” mid-tempo groove metal songs (everything else). At times through my multiple replays, some songs gave me the sense of deja-vu and me coming out thinking that some parts of the record were a little too samey. As I’m writing this, I find it interestingly the similarities between this record and the last album I reviewed, Overkills “The Killing Kind”, which funnily enough this review for “Low” was started way before I started that one; though I felt the need to pause this and get that one out. I never really got that feeling of sameness from “The Killing Kind” as I think those songs had enough rhythmic diversification in its main riffs but this record here is much more technical in between the meat and potatoes riffs, which ultimately makes the songs more interesting despite some feelings of sameness I had felt, plus as a whole the ballad and “Low’s” main instrumental is much more well crafted in comparison to “The Morning After / Private Bleeding” and “Feeding Frenzy”. But anyways, I just thought the timing of both of these reviews was a little funny.

But to summarize “Low” as a whole, I think the album is pretty great and stands as a very solid record in a era full of generic groove metal, alternative metal, grunge, and nu-metal digging their way up from the ground that was unearthed by fully planted feet from those new genres. It surprised me that “Low”, while leaning mostly to the positive side, was controversial here on the site. While some of the main riffs may be a little simple, I think there’s enough technical riffing that separates sections of riffs that keep the music interesting. Of course I would have liked a little more diversity in rhythm and tempo but the majority of the music present ranges from being down right great to decent material. While this album has the title “Low”, I think it’s pretty high up there critically for me though if you want to know what album in Testaments catalog I think actually deserved this title based on its quality, look no further to the next release.