PESTILENCE — Testimony of the Ancients (review)

PESTILENCE — Testimony of the Ancients album cover Album · 1991 · Technical Death Metal Buy this album from MMA partners
4/5 ·
Time Signature
Presence of the dead...

Genre: death metal

Up until this album, most of Pestilence's music had been pretty straightforward and aggressive death metal with thrash metal tendencies, but "Testimony of the Ancients" is quite a radical change in style and sound.

It is much more sophisticated than Pestilence's previous releases and much less brutal. "Testimony of the Ancients" is a really interesting death metal album with progressive inklings here and there - primarily consisting in the unusual use of keyboards which was unusual in death metal at the time (Nocturnus being one of the few other death bands to use keyboards). The keyboards give this album an eerie atmosphere but also serve to really underline the lack of brutality on the album. Moreover, compared to "Consuming Impulse", the music itself is a tad more technical, and the jazz influences that characterize "Spheres" show themselves in some of the guitar solos, which are also very melodic for early 1990s death metal.

Despite the radical differences between this album and previous releases and the increased level of sophistication - and decreased level of brutality - I do think that Pestilence stick to their trademark compact riffs, which is one of the things that ensure that this album, while not brutal is still intense and retains some aggression.

Many of the tracks are short instrumental fillers or transitions between the tracks proper, and while a lot of people seem to really like these filler tracks, I have always found them a tad annoying and unnecessary, because I just want to skip straight to the actual tunes.

Testimony of the ancients certainly is a great album which in many ways contributed importantly to the division of death metal into more melodic and experimental subgenres.
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