Testament "Seen Between the Lines" (Navarre)
By Eric Chon
Thursday. Jun 09, 1:57 AM
Oh the undeserved horrors!

Oh horrors. How can my favorite thrash band be treated like this? Something as vital and influential as “Disciples of the Watch” or “Eerie Inhabitants” deserves the best one can offer: clarity of sound and consistency of picture! But this live concert is a mess. How can you see Alex Skolnick destroy his guitar if the cameraman seems to be suffering from Torret’s Syndrome, except that the craptacular sound must be drowning out all the swearing.

What a horrendous wall of sound it is too. I could barely tell the instruments apart, much less discern the masterful delivery I was surely missing. And it was at this point that I discovered that I had been listening to the “enhanced” audio version! Oh man, if this aural shitstorm was considered the better of the two, I am sure the “classic” one would’ve made me burst a blood-vessel.

Luckily there are a few videos with decent sound and, as novelty items, they certainly work. I admit that it’s awesome that a lot of ‘80s thrash bands were successful enough to warrant videos... but man are they cheesy. How many dystopian wastelands filled with things on fire do we need (and it looks like Soilwork’s latest video proves that metalheads still love it)? I doubt I’d ever watch them again as I have the exact tracks on CD. The rest of the content (rare interviews, candid footage) is also interesting to have, but it’s a case of too little, too late.

When your main reason for buying something sucks so much (the concert), you’ve got problems. Supplemental material is just that: it’s supposed to be extra. It should NOT be better than the concert. Testament are an amazing band and their music is timeless, but it’s a damn shame that they are so mishandled on Seen Between The Lines. Suck.
www.testamentlegions.com
www.navarre.com

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Eric Chon

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