Pestilence - Testimony of the Ancients (1991)

Yes, Steve was a real person, except his name wasn't Steve

I knew someone, let's call him Steve, who was going to write an ambitious twenty-eight-track prog metal album with twenty-two interludes, ending with five in a row. He proudly described his own project as "random", and cited Pestilence, specifically "Testimony of the Ancients", as inspiration. One phrase from our conversation that stuck with me is "You always need more animal noises." It instilled a feeling in me that Steve was less than dead serious about his creative vision. Maybe both of us had a low opinion on interludes in a metal context, with the difference that Steve parodied them while I silently dismissed. He admitted to me he just liked to document his brain farts (his own words) in sound form, and that squeezing proper music between them was an afterthought. I don't keep contact with Steve anymore, and I doubt he ever graced the world with his twenty-eight-track masterpiece.

I wonder if Pestilence had a similar attitude to Steve and pulled an elaborate prank (still less elaborate than Steve) on "Testimony of the Ancients" by making every even-numbered track an interlude, for eight out of sixteen tracks that aren't actual songs. Let's be real, it's such an obviously bad idea to have half the tracks be disconnected sounds of Spanish guitars, mosquitoes and sensual female moans, most of which barely last 30 seconds, too short to develop any idea. On a first listen, they were jarring, and on repeated listens, I realized just how abruptly most songs end before they give way to nonsense. Although the interludes' combined length is a small fraction of the runtime, the randomness of their content and the lack of transitions make them appear disconnected from everything else, and ruin the album's flow. The notable exceptions are "Impure" and "In Sorrow", which are integrated as outros to their preceding songs. Coincidentally, both of these tracks are just long enough to develop an idea, and the songs that precede them fade into them instead of ending abruptly. Those two are more than enough, though even "In Sorrow" is redundant to the previous song's outro. If you have access to a digital version of the album, make a playlist with six or seven fewer interludes, and pretend they never existed.

The actual music is much better, but still has enough issues that even without flow-ruining interludes, "Testimony..." would have been average. The album is split between two distinct approaches. The first and more common approach, which I'm going to call "main" from now on, borders between thrash and death metal, more along the style of "Consvming Impvlse" than "Malevs Maleficarvm" - made up of mainly chromatic syncopated riffs with a few higher-pitched notes to give them more rhythmic definition, or more rhythmically straightforward downpicked riffs with small groups of power chords throughout them; drums match the pace of the guitars using skank beats, modified backbeats and double bass as necessary, without drawing unnecessary attention to themselves. The other, less common, approach includes more conventionally melodic leads and solos (examples: "Twisted Truth", "Land of Tears"), which wouldn't be out of place in a heavy metal song, or riffs with swung rhythm broken into subdivisions of three notes. This second approach is split between Human-ITP era Death and prog thrash bands such as Coroner. The main style arrangements are slightly more restrained than on older albums to make for smoother transitions to the melodic sections, with fewer full-on thrashing sections and fewer discordant Slayer-esque solos.

These melodic sections work on their own and in the context of the songs, but don't quite meet Patrick Mameli's stated in interviews goal to move away from Pestilence's initial influences. The majority of music is still in the main death-thrash style, which I judge not so much as a deliberate attempt at contrast with the new melodic elements as much as a fallback to what's familiar for the band - it's more habitual than intentional. The quality of the main material is worse too. Mameli does a flatter and less expressive version of the former vocalist Martin van Drunen's raspy, wailing vocals. Multiple other riffs bounce and hobble around while failing to build any tension, with some others being outright filler made of four quarter power chords. "Secrecies of Horror" and "Prophetic Revelation" are entirely made out of such seemingly leftover riffs, which already cover 1/4 of the proper music, with more mediocre material spread throughout.

"Testimony of the Ancients" eventually picks up in its last third, but it seems the band is at its best when it strays away from its signature death-thrash style, as if the members were already tired of it. The album's weak main style sections are also hampered by the production - dry, warm and clean production, which isn't bad on its own, but lacks the punch or grit for this kind of music. Both "Testimony..." and "Malevs Maleficarvm" have a guitar tone focused on mid and high frequencies; however, the latter album had a gated bassy snare drum to drive up the intensity of every riff. In addition, the guitar tone on "Testimony of the Ancients" has been deprived of any low end and dissonance, rendering it weak and thin. "Consvming Impvlse" had a bass-heavy production all around, on top of Martin van Drunen's legendary vocals. Both "Malevs Maleficarvm" and "Consvming Impvlse" had enough reverb to sound "bigger" without diluting the impact of any instrument. The only moments when "Testimony of the Ancients" has any real punch to it are when the kick and snare hit together, but that's only in comparison to the rest of the instruments, which have been hollowed out. This production style is serviceable enough for the more mellow melodic sections (which don't try to be heavy), but it robs the aggressive riffs of their impact. A more bass-rich production, still warm and clean, paired with a more basic thrash vocal style, ala "Malevs Maleficarvm" (which should have been doable for Mameli), are easy improvements.

"Testimony of the Ancients" fundamentally doesn't diverge from its predecessors, so I always end up thinking about what it does worse in comparison - the lower quality is a bigger problem than it normally would be, because there are too many similarities, a criticism that doesn't apply to "Spheres". However, the thrashy roots of death metal in the 80's are not complex music, and there aren't so many possibilities to explore with it before it starts repeating itself or turns into something else altogether. The band must have already been low on ideas entering the 90's, and decided it was time to move on. Pestilence's evolution mirrored that of Death, both starting as exemplars of oldschool death metal before showcasing future paths the genre could explore. The difference is that Death had a whole album - Spuritual Healing - where the band subtly changed its base riffing and soloing style, before moving onto full-on prog death-thrash with "Human". It seems "Testimony of the Ancients" concentrated its new ideas in shorter, less cohesive segments instead of weaving them naturally into the core of the music. If the eight interludes weren't a self-aware joke, my only explanation for them is that Pestilence made a vain attempt to distance itself from the death metal scene, even when the rest of the music hadn't deviated that much. I say this with the knowledge that Patrick Mameli feels a degree of disdain for the metal community, so I consider that motivation to be in character for him. The new melodic and proggy elements are good, though they're ultimately held back by the bulk of music, which reiterates the approach of "Consvming Impvlse", but with worse arrangements, worse vocals and ill-fitting production. It's not until "Spheres" when Pestilence truly reinvents itself and stands apart from its roots.