Testament

The Gathering (Spitfire)
by Martin Popoff

Throw years of metal study into a pot, records going this way and that, folks growing up, growing old, folks coming and going, and then watch a convergence of all this life and music experience, and The Gathering is what spits vehemently out the other end. All involved have been in this space for years, Chuck and Eric assembling an all-star band (James Murphy, Steve DiGiorgio and Dave Lombardo) behind them, all five bringing their tight definition of Bay Area thrash to the game. So what occurs is a near perfect execution of state-of-the-art old school music, a style of metal that hasn’t changed much since Exodus, early Megadeth, and early Metallica. Much less terror-filled than Demonic, The Gathering nevertheless counters the great moshing grooves here with almost exclusively dark, pessimistic lyrics which Chuck delivers in more of a Hetfield bark than the “death voice” of the last record. There’s an exotic Watchtower/Sadus/Savatage flavor to the riffs too, a strange and welcome gut-punch which was last rendered magical and hopeful on the first Machine Head (a band we’ve just lost to the Chumps of the Korn). Basically, The Gathering is the record Metallica could have made after Master Of Puppets, and for this, be damn thankful somebody was around to finish the job.
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