Titans of Creation

At the pace of one album every four years since "The Formation of Damnation", Testament continues without batting an eye to extend its gigantic discography with this year its number 13, cursed for the most superstitious, that yet seems to have its effect on our Americans. Because even though the band keeps its all-stars line-up with, just as a reminder, Gene Hoglan at the drums and Steve DiGiorgio at the bass, the trio Billy / Skolnick / Peterson keeps the same artistic aim as in its debuts without searching to widen its range with the talents of the two most recent members. Titans of Creation extends to fifty height minutes (!), as to know almost a quarter of an hour more than on "Brotherhood of the Snake" that I already found quite long. The first contact we have with this album is its artwork with a light blue that takes us back to "Dark Roots of the Earth" in 2012, drawn by the same artist: Eliran Kantor who seems quite busy these times, working on the new Havok, My Dying Bride and Heaven Shall Burn albums just to talk about 2020. Regarding the quality of Testament's artwork, there is nothing to say: I find it quite pretty.

Sadly, though this artwork might be appealing, it doesn't reflect its content, which is way more ordinary. There's nothing to get our teeth into with this "Titans of Creation", even if you like the band like me. Actually, with such a line-up, Testament can hardly fail, that's why this disc isn't a failure either. There are in it some interesting aspects but it counts way too much on the duo guitar/vocals.

I have a sharp tongue: the production highlights well the bass by giving it a very heavy and audible sound that however didn't prevent me from forgetting about who was the guy behind the instrument. Because if you are expecting DiGiorgio to do some misdeeds like in Death's "Individual Thought Patterns" or Sadus' albums, you will be greatly disappointed. First of all, no problems, the bass is clearly audible on songs like "City of Angels" or in the intro of "Ishtar's Gate" but the only thing it does is to follow the drum pattern... which is extremely ordinary as well. In terms of waste of potential, we're scoring high here. To talk quickly about the case of father Hoglan, he seems to suffer from the same symptoms as his bassist sidekick, with too little impressive fills or patterns. At the most would we content ourselves with some heavy double kick as in "WWIII", "Night of the Watch" "Code of Hammurabi" and a very short passage full of nice fills at the end of "Symptoms". Once again, nothing exceptional. For a band like Testament, it would be quite inappropriate to expect Gene Hoglan to act as he did in Death's ITP in which he fully expresses himself but just to stay in the thrash metal genre, it is possible to have an incredible play that is very linear in appearance, just like in Dark Angel's "Darkness Descends". Though almost all the beats are made of kick/snare in eighth-notes, it is delivered with such ferocity that it adds an additional layer of brutality in the songs - just like DiGiorgio in the first Sadus albums. So, Hoglan doesn't need to be in a free jazz band to make everyone understand that he's the boss and yet his work on "Titans of Creation" could not be more ordinary.

All the efforts are concentrated on the duo guitars/singing that made all the glory hours of Testament. Talking about the singing, if I had to quote the biggest advantage of this album, it would be - as usual - Chuck Billy's voice. This guy is a beast and despite being fifty-seven years old he still has a good set of lungs. Even better, he slightly changes his instrument to use sometimes a more extreme register that goes well with the song, like in the very nice "Curse of Osiris" in which the high-pitched scream seems to take its inspiration from black metal - going hand in hand with the riffs and the blasting drums - to make a copy of the latter genre... that is not bad, in my opinion, actually. We would also find an impressive performance in "Code of Hammurabi". Regarding the rest, if you're used to the band, I shouldn't have to spell it out. It is once again very classic but at least we cannot reproach Chuck to weaken with time.

Let's deal now with the second important aspect of the bands, the guitars and their famous catchy rhythmics. Searching a bit in the songs, we'd quickly find some interesting things like the main riff of "WWIII", the catchy parts of the chorus of "Dream Deceiver", the leads of "City of Angels", the main riff of "Code of Hammurabi"... but, passed the first half of the disc, we realise that the interest dies away. The more time passes the more the word "meh..." comes to my mind when it comes to describe the riffs from "Ishtar's Gate" until the end of the album so much they are ordinary or even bad like in the mediocre "Symptoms" that goes with a small groove metal aspect perfectly dispensable. Besides that, countless mid-tempo riffs could not be more ordinary and, despite all the efforts I make, they don't stay stuck in mind for more than ten minutes. Regarding the soli, though we could salute Alex Skolnick's performance in the opener of "Children of the Next Level" or in "False Prophet" we realise that we're far from the glorious hours of Testament to the point of being on the verge of scandal, as shown by the solo on "Curse of Osiris" that simply follows the melody of the rhythmic. The album ends with "Catacombs", an instrumental outro with guitars, atmospheric pads and choirs that ends quickly without having much sense nor any relevance.

More than ever, Testament is a rhythmic-based band, whose interest now lay only on Eric Peterson's massive riffs and on Chuck's still powerful lungs without getting off the beaten track despite the exploits that Gene Hoglan and Steve DiGiorgio can accomplish. Far from being their worst work, "Titans of Creation" brings nothing to a band that has anyway nothing more to prove. It might please the most fervent thrash fans but it will definitively let a bunch of them fall by the wayside.

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