RANKING THE ALBUMS: TESTAMENT

Here I rank all of the studio albums from Bay Area thrash legends TESTAMENT, from bottom to top...

I doubt many will be surprised by my number fourteen... While there are a handful of good tracks on the album, the foray into deathly territory just didn't work for them... Thankfully they corrected this misstep with my number five pick and haven't looked back since...

"First Strike Still Deadly" is included here as it is a studio album and not a mere compilation, and ranks low because it's not only rerecords (less "Reign Of Terror", which was a demo era LEGACY song that never made it to an album), but it's also sterile... While cleaner sounding, it lacks the youthful fire and vigor of the original recordings... Further, early thrash albums were recorded in a time when engineers and producers were figuring out how this music should sound, a feat I feel was achieved with Nuclear Assault's "Survive"...

Overall TESTAMENT has a very consistent discography where the only albums I rarely pull off the shelf are the bottom four... Of the "return of Alex" era only "Brotherhood of the Snake" falls flat, with four of them in my top ten, and one of them making my top five... For a band (and a thrash band at that) with a nearly forty year recording career, to have such a strong catalog, is no small feat...

As with all my rankings, which ARE just preferences, those I reach for most when wanting to hear a particular artist in my collection, I take my three favorite songs from each album (and two from an E.P.) and put them on rotation for a straight week... I then make my picks...

MY KEY PICKS:

"THE LEGACY" (1987): "Over The Wall" / "The Haunting" / "Burnt Offerings"
"THE NEW ORDER" (1988): "Eerie Inhabitants" / "The New Order" / "Disciples Of The Watch"
"PRACTICE WHAT YOU PREACH" (1989): "Practice What You Preach" / "Time Is Coming" / "Sins Of Omission"
"SOULS OF BLACK" (1990): "Face In The Sky" / "Souls Of Black" / "Love To Hate"
"THE RITUAL" (1992): "Electric Crown" / "Let Go Of My World" / "Agony"
"LOW" (1994): "Low" / "Hail Mary" / "All I Could Bleed"
"DEMONIC" (1997): "The Burning Times" / "John Doe" / "Distorted Lives"
"THE GATHERING" (1999): "Down For Life" / "True Believer" / "Riding The Snake"
"FIRST STRIKE STILL DEADLY" (2001): "Into The Pit" / "The Preacher" / "Reign Of Terror"
"THE FORMATION OF DAMNATION" (2008): "More Than Meets The Eye" / "The Evil Has Landed" / "The Persecuted Won't Forget"
"DARK ROOTS OF EARTH" (2012): "Native Blood" / "True American Hate" / "A Day In The Death"
"BROTHERHOOD OF THE SNAKE" (2016): "Brotherhood Of The Snake" / "Stronghold" / "Seven Seals"
"TITANS OF CREATION" (2020): "Children Of The Next Level" / "Dream Deceiver" / "Night Of The Witch"
"PARA BELLUM" (2025): "Infanticide A.I." / "Shadow People" / "Havana Syndrome”

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