Little update first: I plan to blog on a Monday through Friday basis, but don't be too surprised to see weekend posts every now and then.
Ok, back when Roadrunner was still a good label, before they signed such trash as Slipknot, Trivium, and Nickelback, they had spectacular bands such as Cynic, Exhorder, Sadus, Suffocation, and Xentrix in their catalog. Among the bands on the "good list" were Pestilence, a rising death metal powerhouse from the Netherlands. Roadrunner did something with the exploding death metal scene akin to what Sub Pop was doing at the same time with grunge: exploit the rising bands from the tiny scenes and become millionaires while the bands are hung out to dry and end up disbanding within the next few years. Both movements would be dead or close to it by the time 1994 was out.
Pestilence's last great gasp was in 1991, before the love-it-or-hate-it Spheres was released. Testimony is a concept album of sorts. I don't even think that's the right word for it, but this album is whatever it is when a band feels compelled to put a thirty second sample between every track and call it a song. Seriously, this album has 16 tracks half of which are sample tracks, but I guess it's no big deal and you can just skip over them or delete them when you rip it.
On to the actual music now that I've talked/complained about random shit the past two paragraphs. Pestilence decided to do what was hip and in style at that point in the death metal community and that was to get more technical, more progressive, and just plain better. The thrash/death metal that they, Atheist, Death and pretty much everyone else had been doing was great and all, but this jazzy progressive stuff was just fucking mind blowing. The Secrecies Of Horror kicks things off and pretty much sets the tone for the rest of the album. Those fast, classic Pestilence patented death metal riffs pummel throughout the song leading up to the solo which is usually quite melodic, but in some cases is just insane wankery that fits perfectly into the song. Patrick Mameli now performs vocals on top of dual lead guitars with Patrick Uterwijk and does both jobs admirably. The Patrick and Patrick tag team is always doing something to keep you interested and their riffs exert a broad array of emotions from up tempo stuff like Stigmatized and Secrecies, to creepier tunes like Land of Tears and Prophetic Revelations.
The production is quite good, and even though the guitars aren't exactly the heaviest sounding, that's to be expected of this brand of death metal. The producer, Scott Burns, gains massive kudos in my book for making the bass actually audible through most of the album. The only bad point is the drums which seem to be under mixed and part of the background, which is a tragedy because Marco Foddis does some good work behind his kit and manages to find the sweet spot between impressive and retardily chaotic.
Overall, the record is a fun listen and though there are no bad tracks here (besides the unnecessary segue tracks)some songs are better than others and make otherwise good works seem like filler, and I think the sample tracks might be to blame for this. My favorite songs off the CD are "Lost Souls" "Stigmatized" and "Prophetic Revelations".
The song "Land of Tears" is of note for the fact that it features guest vocals from the witch in Left 4 Dead, seventeen years before the game's release. You gotta get your start early, right?
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