Years ago, I was wandering around town during my summer vacation, and went browsing inside this Odds n Ends store. There, sandwiched between a Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince tape and some Greatest Love Songs compilation were two cassettes by a band called Testament - The Ritual and Low. The only really heavy bands I'd heard back then were Metallica, Iron Maiden, Alice in Chains, Black Sabbath, Pantera and Soundgarden, so I didn't have a clue who these guys were. Deciding that the cover art looked somewhat menacing, I took a chance and bought them. I also bought that Fresh Prince album, but since I traded it off sometime later for Down on the Upside, it didn't work out too badly. Here ends the nostalgic flashback.

It was quite a while later that I managed to backpedal through their discography and hear them out all the way from The Legacy to The Gathering. The early albums were quite a revelation, especially listening to Alex Skolnick improve with each album to the point where he was dishing out world-class solos in songs like Electric Crown and Return to Serenity. Of course, most of us know what happened then - he got bitten by the mellow bug, left the band to cut one album with Savatage and finally settled on full blown jazz. A bit like Chris Poland, but unfortunately a bit less ballsy. So now we've got the history lesson covered as well.

Why all this is worth a mention is because the biggest hype point about The Formation of Damnation was the return of Skolnick to the fold. He was very much back in action for their Live in London concert, getting back to grips with the rapidfire shred/riff combo that the music demanded. On a Lespaul, no less. Could his return be enough to bump the band's output back to the legendary stuff of yore?

Unfortunately, the answer is a rueful shake of the head. It's tricky to point out where the fault lies, but something's definitely missing. They still sound angry as hell, which is something other thrash contemporaries like Metallica, Megadeth and Slayer don't have a hope of claiming these days, and part of the reason is probably that they never made it as big as those guys, so there wasn't really any opportunity for fat-cat complacence to set in.

Also, woe to Paul Bostaph and the albatross around his neck. He's already been associated with the decline of two huge outfits, Slayer and Exodus, so his inclusion in the band this time makes it a neat third. He's not exactly a bad drummer, it's just that his imagination with regard to the dynamics of a song seems to be pretty limited and that's always going to severely bite a rock band in the ass, taking a big chunk out.

So, to reiterate, there's aggression and tightness in plenty, as well as the quirky addition of Skolnick's jazzy tendencies - check out the solo on Dangers of the Faithless. However, none of the songs really have the instantly infectious nature of, say, D.N.R or Down for Life, let alone classics like Over the Wall and Into the Pit (hey, when you stack those two back to back, it sounds like an interesting chain of events).

Chuck Billy is in fine form, but it's way better listening to him in Dublin Death Patrol, which managed to put together a way better thrash metal album that trumps this one in variety, catchiness and class. When I start thinking that I'd rather play an Evile or The Absence album than Testament, something's seriously amiss. Here's hoping the guys can get it together and keep it that way for the next one.



Label: Nuclear Blast
Year of release: 2008