Titans of Creation

I've always seen Testament as a huge disappointment for all the talent wasted and the unfulfilled prospect: it's like a fine sportscar driven with the breaks pulled. They had the potential to be one of the greatest trash metal bands out there, but kind of stayed in an average/medium-high level due to inconsistency and bad label choices following their great debut The Legacy in 1987. Of course you can fully enjoy Testament as they usually are a guarantee if you need some good trash metal as background music, or some fast-paced music to listen to while running or driving your car. Nothing exceptional, songs that tend to blend into eachother, but also some nice metal music to make you pass the time and keep you company.

This album does not add or remove anything substantial to Testament's discography. It's an average album, at best, with some good moments and some bad ones (which tend to be more than the former ones, too bad). The overall reaction is yawning - with occasional headbanging. Throughout the album you have basically good, decent riffs, with some great solos here and there but your mind starts soon to wander while listening, which is never a good sign. The production is high level and it's not a bad record per se; the major flaw is mainly due to the fact that whatever good is there, gets ruined by poor songwriting choices. Generally, the culprit is the chorus, interrupting whatver good stuff is in there (which is mostly represented by the main riff alone), but you soon find out that there are many issues with the verses as well.

I never really liked Chuck Billy as a vocalist, but in Titans of Creation I found him worse than ever. Uninspired and bleak, trying too hard to sound tough. Worst of all, there is a sort of metalcore and grunge-ish aspect in his vocals here, something that haunts the entire album and personally drives me mad. Most of the songs on this album have this issue, some clear examples can be found in "City of Angels" as well as the opener "Children of the Next Level". This may be an effort to sound renovated or modern. Too bad, because you do not sound modern at all, more likely you sound a little pathetic.

Luckily for Testament, tracks in the second half of the album are slightly better, starting from the track "Symptoms". Rhythms are more oriented to speedy trash metal and that "metalcore touch" found in the first half of the album is less present. There are still however some bad songwriting choices that keeps the album on a low quality level. For instance, I cannot understand why ruining a perfectly good song like "Curse of Osiris" with that unnecessary "attempt to do black metal" chorus. It's not contribuiting to the album in general and it's completely out of style with the rest of the song. It's also pretty significative that the last track "Catacombs" is perhaps the best one, even if it's a short instrumental piece. It has an unexpected yet quite convincing martial doom-ish riff with some choir chants added (yet another songwriting false step, but I get the fact that it brings some kind of atmosphere and is coherent with the "catacomb" theme so, I'll pass on this one).

This album was a big disappointment. Not a complete mess, but it could have been better, if only they had kept a little more focus. From a band that has some 30+ years in the field, you could and should expect better.