Concert Review: An Evening with Testament – by Tommy B. Smith

I recently had the chance to catch Testament on tour for the 35th anniversary of their third album, Practice What You Preach. Billed as An Evening with Testament, this special run of dates was to commemorate the classic thrash metal release.

Upon arrival at the venue (The Hall in Little Rock), one unusual detail I noticed was that the whole place was so filled with fog, I could barely see the band’s merchandise behind the counter. Others were having the same problem. We wondered… Was this intentional, or was it the result of some rampant fog machine with a temper and no iota of self-awareness?

One fellow in line mentioned to me that he had seen the band on the original tour for Practice What you Preach, which would have been around ’89 or ‘90. As for myself, the last time I saw them play a full set was in 2000 as they toured for their beast of an album from the previous year, The Gathering. This excludes the time I saw them play “Over the Wall” at a festival event sometime between then and now.

The band took the foggy stage with the slamming title track from Practice What You Preach, a favorite from their live sets and a solid opening. They followed with other songs from the same album, including “Sins of Omission” and “Perilous Nation.” I’ve long considered “Time is Coming” to be one of the band’s more accessible tracks, and it found its way into the set list, as well as every other song from their 1989 release.

Between songs, various band members offered words about the original album and tour. Before launching into “The Ballad,” the band mentioned it had earned this title because they originally believed it to be the only ballad they would ever write or perform. “Wrong!” they then declared.

“The Ballad” was and is a brilliant contrast to heavier, up-tempo songs like “Nightmare (Coming Back to You),” which followed in eventual course. Introduced by legendary lead guitarist Alex Skolnick, the instrumental “Confusion Fusion” completed the Practice What You Preach portion of their set, and this tour marked the first time they had ever played the track live. I’ve seldom heard a thrashy instrumental piece translate so well to a live setting, but with Alex, Eric Peterson, and Steve Di Giorgio dominating the stage, what else could anyone expect?

After a brief reprieve, the band returned to the stage and brought out the acoustic guitars, furthering the evidence of Testament’s versatility and prowess as musicians, for an unplugged delivery of “The Legacy” from Souls of Black.

Matters got heavier after that. They brought forth a couple of tracks from one of the more recent releases, Dark Roots of Earth, which included “Rise Up” and “Native Blood,” the latter inspired by Chuck’s Native American heritage, which also fueled the subsequent beautiful and powerful “Trail of Tears,” a song about the tragic journey of the Native American tribes forced out of their lands by the United States government in the early-to-mid-nineteenth century.

Though they are a thrash outfit, Testament’s ballads, when they do them, are riveting. It’s unusual for the band to play such a ballad-heavy set, they themselves admitted, yet as indicated, this was no standard Testament show.

After playing the concert staple “Low” followed by one of their newer tracks, Chuck described a recent show where a mosh pit had started during another of the band’s ballads, the entrancing “Return to Serenity.” He encouraged this crowd to do the same, and that they did, amusingly enough.

Afterward, he declared it was time to get a real mosh pit going, and this heralded the crushing “Into the Pit” from The New Order, the oldest Testament song included in the set and a sonic sledgehammer, leaving no room for doubt that Testament stands among the kings of thrash metal.

This is a band that, even when faced with an industry which came to abhor metal in the mid-nineties, never turned their backs on the intended mission or their fans. I’m reminded of a comment Chuck made sometime earlier in the show, that in the mid-nineties when the so-called pop culture experts deemed metal to be little more than a dying fad, someone from the music industry visited and asked the band to record a song in the alternative genre. They played “Dog Faced Gods,” which left the industry executive gaping, scratching his head and wondering, “What the fuck was that?”

Thanks for staying the course, Testament, and for an incredible show that reminded me yet again of why, these decades later, I’m still listening.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Tommy B. Smith is a writer of horror and dark fiction whose works meander through the darker spaces of the psychological and the cosmic. A two-time Imadjinn Award-winning author and 2023 nominee for the Michael Knost Wings Award, he has been featured in numerous publications to span the years, and is the author of the Black Carmenia series. His presence currently infests the west Arkansas River Valley, where he resides with his wife and six cats.