ALBUM REVIEW: Para Bellum – Testament

It’s time to consider a painful truth about TESTAMENT. The Bay Area thrash titans may be a beloved institution, and their live shows are consistently good, but their recent run of albums hasn’t been the greatest. They’ve always got a couple of kick-ass metal tunes up their sleeves, but they’ve not given us a flawless, skip-nothing record since 2008’s The Formation Of Damnation. It’s immediate follow-up – 2012’s Dark Roots Of The Earth – had a flawless first half, but then sabotaged itself with a tedious mid-track list ballad and never recovered. Brotherhood Of The Snake was marred by a saggy middle and Titans Of Creation suffered too. It’s almost as though TESTAMENT have written one incredible album since The Formation…, but spread it across three records and filled the gaps with B-sides. They’re still an amazing band, but you’d be hard pressed to find any fans crying out to hear Black Jack live.

Which brings us to Para Bellum, their fourteenth full-length. It’s the strongest they’ve gifted us since their 2008 game changer, but it’s still marred by the same frustrating issues as the last couple. At their best, TESTAMENT are a killer thrash-groove-death machine; the closing title track is exceptional, and first single Infanticide A.I. is a ball-breaker. However, there’s a few creative missteps that stop it being as good as it could be. Make no mistake, some of these tracks are bad ass and will comfortably sit alongside modern favourites like Native Blood, but there’s also a couple of hangers on dragging it down.

The most glaring example is Meant To Be. This song is Para Bellum’s answer to Cold Embrace; it’s a seven-and-a-half-minute long ballad that saps all the energy out of the album. TESTAMENT have never managed to write a decent ballad, and this one is no exception; it’s needlessly long and uninvolving. What’s worse, it turns up before the album even reaches the halfway point. The first four tracks are raging, pit-igniting monsters, but then this one arrives way too early and the momentum disappears.

Elsewhere, the band lean heavily on death metal with Witch Hunt, a track which starts with a distinctly Scandinavian winter riff and winds up being the heaviest cut on here. It’s not terrible, but it comes across like a holdover from the controversial Demonic album. Some folks may love it, but it didn’t land for us, and the same goes for Nature Of The Beast. Here, TESTAMENT veer into sleaze metal territory, complete with gambling imagery in the lyrics, and it’s…it’s not good. It’s a cringeworthy trip into the downtown Las Vegas and makes them sound like a D list band who only got signed because they vaguely resemble GUNS N’ ROSES and Appetite For Destruction just came out.

What makes this doubly irritating though, is that when TESTAMENT are on point, they’re incredible. The opening three songs are neck-wrecking, pit-igniting monsters, and singer Chuck Billy comes across like a hyper-macho titan of metal. Shadow People is a grooving, hair-flinging anthem and Room 117 sees them experimenting with a slightly more melodic style, but it works. It’s less thrashy and could have been written for a horror film soundtrack, but it’s catchy and engaging and succeeds admirably.

In some respects, it doesn’t matter how good or bad Para Bellum is. TESTAMENT are made men and would have to intentionally sabotage themselves to disrupt their status nowadays. They’ve earned their place in the pecking order and are so loved that it’s hard to imagine their next UK tour not being a massive success. It’s also commendable that this far into their careers, they’re still willing to experiment and flex their creative muscles. However, they’ve not written an unmissable album in years. Para Bellum is good and hits more than it misses, but when you compare this to their earlier work, or the recent EXODUS and KREATOR efforts, you can’t help noticing the cracks.

Rating: 6/10

Para Bellum is set for release on October 10th via Nuclear Blast.

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