 
I knew from the very minute that “Dark Roots
Of Earth” cropped up on my list of downloadable
promo releases that I was in for a few hours of
musical bliss, that’s based on the simple
fact that I’m yet to stumble across a bad
Testament album in their lengthy back catalogue
within their almost 30 year career as a band.
It’s no wonder they are credited as one
of the greatest and most popular thrash metal
bands of the 80’s and of all time for that
matter, this latest effort puts their album count
into double figures as this makes album number
10; 10 albums and almost 30 years of touring and
they’ve still survived, newbie’s please
take note.
Band’s these days are seemingly all about
long winded introductions building up to their
material; I don’t know about the rest of
you but some smaller ones are alright at times
but the majority of them and the longer ones just
piss me off, evidentially this is not the veteran
way as the opening track on this record “Rise
Up” hits you in the face like a house brick,
thick tone, high octane pace and Chuck Billy’s
raw vocals doubled up with his demonic roars juicing
up the heavier metal side of their style. Possibly
my favourite track off the entire album is the
second track “Native Blood”, it’s
got a wicked memorable chorus line and it sound’s
sinister as shit, that alongside “True American
Hate” provide an excellent contribution
to keeping thick heavy thrash alive.
There’s much more though to the band than
just heavy metal even though they aggressively
excel at that, they are experimental musicians
after all which is why tracks like “Cold
Embrace” and “Dark Roots of The Earth”
take pride and place on the album; much slower
pace, with more technical fitting riffs and Billy
exposing and exploiting his tremendous vocal range
to really put a stomp on the differing material.
At the end of the record as well there are a few
cover songs, I don’t think that they are
actually on the normal edition of the album and
if this is a special edition thing and it costs
more than standard I wouldn’t really waste
your money, they aren’t exactly the greatest
cover songs ever, not bad but nowhere near worth
spending money on.
10 fucking albums, a 30 year fucking career and
they’re still rolling them off with the
greatest of ease with the highest quality material
around and if I may say so myself possibly some
of the absolute highest quality material they’ve
ever released themselves. Like a fine whiskey
they seem to be becoming more and more superior
with age, by that note in another 30 years they’ll
be producing music that causes actual brain explosions,
and quite frankly I hope I’m around for
that because I love this album and am ready for
another already!
4.5/5
Review by James Webb
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