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New To Us | TESTAMENT
45 Plays1 year ago
In the first New To Us video, we take song suggestions from our subscribers to introduce to a band we weren’t familiar with: Testament!
You can also watch us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7mfJVCp_TzbPNZNMMemJuw
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Transcript
Introduction to 'New to Us' Segment
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to Manders Metal, my name is Daria and I'm Lads and together we're our husband and wife team both pro musicians talking all things heavy metal and today we have a new segment on our channel for you actually yeah this is going to be a new to us we're basically metal bands that we haven't really known or checked out we're either going to take their top five songs from spotify or you guys as with this episode are going to recommend us some songs from this band and we're going to have a listen give you our thoughts and tell you what we think about them
Exploring Testament: Audience's Picks
00:00:39
Speaker
So the first New to Us episode is dedicated to testament and you guys kindly suggested five songs for us to check out. That's right, yeah, we've got 1989's Practice What You Preach, 1992's Electric Crown and Return to Serenity, 1999's DMR and 2008's More Than Meets The Eye. So what we've done is we've went away, they've listened to these songs and we're now going to give you our thoughts on them.
Analyzing 'Practice What You Preach'
00:01:07
Speaker
So the first song on our list was the title song from the third album, Practice What You Preach. Now, Testament's first album came out in 1987 and they did 13 albums in their career up to this point. The first song, Practice What You Preach, it's very just, it's thrashy, isn't it? Yeah, it's just thrashy. It almost sounds
00:01:29
Speaker
Metallica inspired to me as well. I think they kind of intertwine like that. There's a complexity of riffage in this song which I think was quite common as we got towards the end of the 80s with Metallica's and Justice for All. They kind of took it way more progressive, the riffs were a bit more intricate, a bit more detailed and I kind of hear that here as well. Overall a really cool song fits in with the style of Thrash.
Influences and Thrash Metal Evolution
00:01:51
Speaker
Something I didn't know about them actually is that they were very inspired by the new wave of British heavy metal
00:01:56
Speaker
And although they formed in 1983, their first album wasn't until 87. So actually this makes them part of the second wave of thrash metal because the likes of Slayer, Negadeth and Metallica and Anthrax had already put out albums before this.
Metallica References in Testament's Music
00:02:10
Speaker
So the next two songs we took a look at were Electric Crown and Return to Serenity from 1992's album The Ritual. And what I felt here straight away is I was hearing
00:02:22
Speaker
thrash era Metallica throughout both of these songs yeah now be this in the form of like a heavier song like electric crown or the metal ballad that was returned to serenity i was hearing hints and elements of Metallica which makes sense because Metallica were one of the pioneering thrash bands so why wouldn't you take inspiration from them well i thought that both of these songs had such pleasant melodies it was nice to listen to
00:02:47
Speaker
Electro Crown has really lovely chorus melody and I mean longer because you can just you would like to sing along you know and same with Return to Serenity I think it was like this ballad wasn't it it was this beautiful ballad and just made you really sort of groove with it and I really loved the melody throughout that as well and I also just want to say that I absolutely loved
00:03:12
Speaker
bass part in Return to Serenity. It was so dissonant in places but with this really agreeable melody it sort of worked really well. Well with that ballad I thought there was a lot of unusual chord choices which probably linked to what you were saying about the bass.
00:03:27
Speaker
Often, when metal bands play a ballad, because they're not used to it and because it's not a normal thing, you have them playing it safe in terms of chords and which notes you're going to play and sing. But I heard really interesting chord choices here, and I thought it was really interesting that they did that, and that probably links to what you were saying about that.
Production Style of 'Electric Crown'
00:03:43
Speaker
Electric Crown had a much more garage-y vibe than the previous stuff. And what I mean by garage is, raw production
00:03:54
Speaker
maybe not double tracking guitars you know it just sounds like you're it does what it says in the title you're a band in a garage just playing two guitars one vocal one drummer one bass you know like that and we know that in the 90s Metallica went down the garagey route with their covers album garage ink and the load and reload albums
00:04:11
Speaker
We think, you know, we've said previously, we think they were kind of following the lineage and where grunge was going in that time. But I think you can hear it here as well. In the 90s, there just seemed to be this thing about fresh bands, bringing it down a bit, going less on production and heavier with riffage.
DNR: Fusion of Thrash and New Vocals
00:04:28
Speaker
So next up is 1999's DNR.
00:04:31
Speaker
which I found interesting because I wasn't hearing anything new in terms of like, stylish or kind of riffs they're doing. It still sounded like a mixture of what we'd heard before and it sounded really cool, enjoyed a lot of the music. But there was some growling and all screaming at the end, wasn't there?
00:04:47
Speaker
Yeah it's just like really harsh sort of distorted vocal and oh that brings a lot of energy in. Well it added a new dynamic to the song I thought and again just remember guys this is a band new to us we don't know their full discography we haven't listened to every song we are just going bass chronological order on these five songs as recommended by you guys and DMR was quite fresh I thought because like I said it combined everything that we liked from the previous bunch of songs and added some screaming so what the hell's not to like?
Anthemic Thrash in 'More Than Meets The Eye'
00:05:17
Speaker
So the fifth and final song we're going to do is the More Than Meets The Eye from 2008's Formation of Damnation. Now, looking at their discography, Testament have put out an album every two years or so from 1987 to 2001. Then they had this short break of about seven years and then they came back, well it's not that short, is it? Seven years. But then they came back in 2008 and then they put out an album every four years after that. So this was their return album. Now I've wanted to listen to this song for a while because
00:05:46
Speaker
When I get to the end of a playlist in my car and we're driving along, if I'm listening to Slayer or Metallica or one of those kind of bands, then when the playlist comes to an end and it suggests a new song for you, it always puts on For The Glory Of, which is the song that is before this on the album.
00:06:02
Speaker
and I had to give them credit for that song, for the glory of, because what it does is it really builds it up, and it's a great little one and a half minute song that's preparing you for this. And for ages, I've wanted to hit next, to go to the next song, but Spotify doesn't work that way, and it's never come on more than meets the eye. So I've been waiting for this for a while, and it's a really cool song. I think it's my favorite of all of them. You've got that chanty part at the beginning, isn't it? It's like, whoa.
00:06:30
Speaker
And we don't normally think of anthemic stuff in Thrash. I mean, I think, you know, Metallica's Fade to Black at the end, live, he puts in the... You know, you've got those dual guitar parts about their songs, which you could sing along to. But in terms of a band actually putting in some chanting, some anthemic chanting, I thought this was quite fresh and unique. As we discussed before this video, there's not a drastic change of sound with this band.
00:06:58
Speaker
With Metallica, it'd be a lot more interesting because you've got the thrash era, you've got the sort of grungy era, then you've got the return, you know, all that sort of stuff. But with this, it just kind of sits at thrash. It's just a bit more varied with Metallica, I guess. But I think what people really love about Testament is that how they stay true to what they like and what they can do really well.
Testament's Consistent Thrash Sound
00:07:17
Speaker
And we can hear this just across these five songs, can't we? We've heard the third album.
00:07:23
Speaker
And we've heard a couple after that. We've had a nice spread of it. And we can still hear why you guys must love them because the sound hasn't changed. Various elements have been added and incorporated like the screaming, like the anthemic chanting. But undoubtedly, the base of the music has been that classic second wave thrash that I imagine brought them their fame and success.
00:07:46
Speaker
Thank you so much guys for being here with us today. I hope you enjoyed the first episode of new to us segment on Minds of Metal and there will be more of this to come. So please keep an eye on our community posts for new posts from us asking you to suggest songs.
00:08:04
Speaker
And to the Testament fans that suggested these songs to us, thank you very much. We've had a great time. I really enjoyed it. I think I will go and check out a bit more Testament. I will as well. And I like Thrash, so I think it's just a great choice. Testament and Thrash, literally a match made in heaven.
Concluding Thoughts and Audience Engagement
00:08:19
Speaker
Thank you again for joining us. See you next time, and have a metal day. Have a lovely day. We'll see you very soon.