Practice What You Preach – Testament

Time to admit that although I have listened to this album quite a bit since owning it on a copied tape since I was about 18 there are only two songs that I can really remember. “Practice What You Preach” and “The Greenhouse Effect”. Sure, I’ve listened to the whole thing and I’ve enjoyed the album for many years but if you asked me which songs are on here those two would be your answer with some unqualified hand waving about the others.

I’ve seen Testament twice. Both times was pretty good. The first was alongside other greats of the 80s thrash revolution:

  • Suicidal Tendencies
  • Testament
  • Megadeth
  • Slayer

These four bands played a “Clash Of The Titans” tour and I saw them at Wembley Arena. I can still remember watching Testament and being excited at recognising the song “Practice What You Preach”. The other time I saw them was at Koko. Both times I was impressed.

This is one of those important albums where it helped forge the sounds in my head. It gave me breathing space and helped build the future mix of what I would like.

This album also contains a song about how humans are messing up the environment. This album was released in 1989. Climate change isn’t a new thing. It’s just been ignored by politicians for as long as we’ve known about it.

Dark Roots Of Earth – Testament

I bought this album because I was going to see Testament play at KoKo in London. I know “Practice What You Preach” from my days at school and I thought I needed to know a few more songs and so I got their latest album.

Old Dog  applies to this album, but I would say it definitely works well. There’s a maturity in the song writing and it is also well produced. The anger is still there but reduced slightly from those heady days of teenage testosterone. They played a few songs live and they sounded good. There’s something funny about middle-aged rockers trying to maintain the anger at the establishment, but also becoming part of the machine they hated.

It’s worth a listen.