Category: news

Today, Cro-Mags—the legendary New York hardcore band led by frontman Harley Flanagan—are proud to announce their new album, The Age of Quarrel: 40 Years of Quarrel, a tribute to their groundbreaking 1986 debut. Release date is November 13th, 2026 and the album will come via BLIIBLK. Following the release of “Wired for Chaos,” their first… Continue Reading →

The Avalanches have clearly been building up to an album, and today, they’re ready to tell us about it.

The post The Avalanches Announce New Album <em>No Bad Memories</em>: Hear “Can’t Get Over Losing You” (Feat. Portraits Of Tracy) appeared first on Stereogum.

Our Top 10 Kenny Wayne Shepherd Songs list celebrates the work of one of the most important blues-rock guitarists to emerge during the 1990s. Kenny Wayne Shepherd was born on June 12, 1977, in Shreveport, Louisiana, and grew up surrounded by the musical traditions of the American South. Shepherd began playing guitar at an early age and encountered Stevie Ray Vaughan when he was seven. When we interviewed Kenny Wayne Shepherd, that meeting came up early in our conversation about the musicians who inspired him. Vaughan’s influence can be heard in Shepherd’s attack, tone, and phrasing, but the younger guitarist

The post Top 10 Kenny Wayne Shepherd Songs Of All Time appeared first on ClassicRockHistory.com.

5 more new tracks will be out this month.

The post Darko Tap Northlane & Molotov Solution Members For Their Newly Announced EP “Cuckoo” appeared first on Theprp.com.

Sometimes the cure for what ails you is one of the world’s hardest emcees going in over soulful boom-bop production. Benny The Butcher is here to supply just that. The Griselda great just dropped “Summer ’26,” the third in his annual series. Harry Fraud provides la música, chopping up the Lovin’ Spoonful’s ’66 chart-topper “Summer In The City,” and Benny cuts loose with the breathless bars you desire.

The post Benny The Butcher – “Summer ’26” appeared first on Stereogum.

Plus songs from Motörhead, Audioslave, Underoath, Quicksand, Trivium and more.

The post Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, White Zombie, Lamb Of God, Helmet, 311, Etc. Featured On ‘Madden 27’ Soundtrack appeared first on Theprp.com.

THE FIRST SINGLE TO BE TAKEN FROM THE NEW ALBUM GOH-KA – SET FOR RELEASE ON PEACEVILLE ON SEPTEMBER 4^th

Japanese metal pioneers Sigh are back with ‘Unputenpu’, the first single to be taken from their upcoming new studio album ‘Goh-ka’, alongside a stunning new music video created by Costin Chioreanu.

Speaking about the new track, frontman and Sigh mastermind Mirai Kawashima said:

“Honestly, I have no idea at all how the song sounds to other people. Shuffle is the world-widely used rhythm and Japan is no exception. I’ve been using this rhythm in the songs like “Shikigami”, “Ecstatic Transformation”, and “Midnight Sun” but I guess I have completed my own Japanese style on “Unputenpu”. The guitar lead by Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth definitely gives another boost to the song.”

“Unputenpu expresses the idea that whether a person is blessed with good fortune or struck by misfortune is determined by God’s will, the will of heaven, fate or something totally beyond our control and we cannot do anything to change it. Anyone could die today or lose somebody you love. Life can be cruel any time. The song is based on my personal experience but I don’t want to talk about the details…”

WATCH THE NEW VIDEO FOR ‘UNPUTENPU’, CREATED BY COSTIN CHIOREANU

STREAM/DOWNLOAD ‘UNPUTENPU’

Music: Sigh

Lyrics: Mirai Kawashima

Mirai Kawashima: Vocals, Hammond, Shinobue, Hichiriki, Sheng

Dr. Mikannibal: Vocals

Nozomu Wakai: Electric and Acoustic Guitars

Mike Heller: Drums, Percussion

Yukiko Shibutani: Bass, Backing Vocals

Masayoshi Tanaka: Wadaiko, Surigane, Tebiragane

Mikael Åkerfeldt: Guitar Solo

Ginzaburo Abe: Shamisen

Goh-Ka is a new highlight of atmosphere, technical mastery, and meticulously arranged epics of metallic grandeur. Main-man Mirai Kawashima notes this as being as equally personal an album as ‘Shiki’, both musically and lyrically.

From a musical perspective, if you were to place the main ingredients of Celtic Frost, Voivod, Black Sabbath, horror movies and Japan into a cauldron and stir it, you will get ‘Goh-ka’. Numerous additional spices such as psychedelic rock, prog rock and classical music are also evident over the album’s close to one-hour duration.

The album title ‘Goh-ka’ has a triple meaning, being: 業火 infernal fire scorching sinners, 劫火 a huge fire that burns down the world at the end of time, and 業果 karma. The primary theme permeating the album is Kuso-zu; a series of Buddhist paintings or illustrations depicting the nine stages of a human body’s decomposition after death, created to encourage meditation on the impermanence of life, the inevitability of death, and the detachment from physical beauty and worldly attachment.

It openly shows the harsh reality that no matter how beautiful you are, you’ll be dead and rot sooner or later. And Kuso-shi is a poem based on these paintings. The artworks on the cover and in the booklet of ‘Goh-ka’ are therefore Kuso-zu themselves.

SIGH – GOH-KA

Kuso-shi 1, 2, and 3 – 09:11

Jigoku-Zoshi 1: Unkamusho – 03:55

Anzenshokon – 06:24

Kuso-shi 4, 5, and 6 – 07:21

Shoso – 00:56

Unputenpu – 05:41

Jinmenjushin – 06:14

Jigoku-Zoshi 2: Tokatsujigoku – 03:06

Kushukankyo – 01:47

Kuso-shi 7 – 01:56

Kuso-shi 8 and 9 / Mettaijakujo – 11:23

GOH-KA WILL BE RELEASED ON 4^th SEPTEMBER ON A NUMBER OF COLOURED VINYL VARIANTS, CD AND DIGITALLY. PRE-ORDER HERE.

PRE-ORDERS OF THE ALBUM FROM THE PEACEVILLE STORE AND BAND STORE WILL COME WITH THE FREE ‘LEGACY OF HORRORS’ 10-TRACK SIGH SAMPLER.

Joining Mirai Kawashima and Dr Mikannibal along with guitarist Nozomu Wakai, are Frédéric Leclercq (Kreator) on bass, plus renowned US drummer Mike Heller.‘Goh-ka’ was recorded across multiple studios, and once again mixed and mastered by Lasse Lammert at LSD studios in Germany.

SIGH TOUR DATES:

EUROPE
09/03 PL Aleksandrow Lodzki Summer Dying Loud
09/04 PL Cracow Zaścianek
09/05 CZ Ostrava Metal III
09/07 DE Munich Hansa 39 @ Feierwerk
09/08 DE Leipzig Moritzbastei
09/09 DE Berlin Badehaus
09/10 DK Copenhagen Beta @ Amager Bio
09/11 DE Hamburg Betty
09/12 DE Oberhausen Death & Damnation Fest
09/13 NL Leeuwarden Neushoorn
09/14 NL Utrecht DB’s
09/15 FR Paris Backstage By The Mill

BUY TICKETS

Japanese metal pioneers Sigh formed in 1989/1990. Their genre-classic Black Metal debut Scorn Defeat arrived in 1993, and with a subsequent journey through the strange and the psychedelic, incorporating a whole eclectic mix of genre styles & ideas throughout their career, Sigh has remained a vital creative force in the avantgarde field whilst maintaining their old school roots, as witnessed on the 2022 album (and first for Peaceville Records), Shiki. This was followed by the remaking of their Hangman’s Hymn album as part of the band’s 35th anniversary celebrations, in the shape of I Saw the World’s End: Hangman’s Hymn MMXXV (2025).

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Nancy Wilson says the upcoming collection is "really, really strong." Continue reading…

Every Testament studio album ranked from worst to best — all fourteen records, spanning 1987’s The Legacy to 2025’s Para Bellum. Testament formed in Berkeley, California in 1983 under the name Legacy. Rhythm guitarist Eric Peterson is the only member present on all fourteen albums, with vocalist Chuck Billy appearing on every record since joining in 1986.

The band’s current lineup is Billy, Peterson, lead guitarist Alex Skolnick, bassist Steve Di Giorgio and drummer Chris Dovas. Their highest-charting album reached No. 12 on the Billboard 200 — and it isn’t the one at the top of this list. Neither is the record that gave them their biggest radio hit. We’re counting down from 14 to 1.

Here’s the thing about Testament.

They are, by any reasonable measure, the best band never quite let into the room. The Big Four was always an accident of timing and marketing rather than a verdict on quality — and if you’d polled Bay Area clubs in 1988 about who had the sharpest riffs and the best guitar player, a lot of hands would have gone up for the band from Berkeley.

Then everything that could go wrong did. Their best guitarist left for jazz. Their commercial peak arrived on their most compromised record. Their singer got cancer. Their lead guitarist got a brain tumor. They went through drummers the way most bands go through strings.

And somehow, four decades on, they’re making some of the best music of their career.

So this is every Testament album, ranked worst to best. All fourteen, all eras, including the re-recordings and including last year’s Para Bellum.

Fair warning: this is an argument, not a survey. The album that charted highest isn’t in the top ten. Come fight about it in the comments.

14. First Strike Still Deadly (2001)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Steve Di Giorgio, John Tempesta. Steve “Zetro” Souza guests on vocals.

Let’s be straight about what this is: a re-recording album. Ten tracks from The Legacy and The New Order, redone with modern studio technology and a returning Alex Skolnick.

The circumstances behind it are genuinely moving. Chuck Billy had been diagnosed with germ cell seminoma. The Bay Area scene had rallied around him with the Thrash Of The Titans benefit show. Skolnick had played with the band for the first time since 1992. There was real emotion in the room and you can hear it in the performances — Skolnick sounds fantastic, and having Zetro sing on two of the tracks he originally wrote for Legacy closes a loop that had been open for fifteen years.

But it doesn’t contain a single new song. Whatever the intent, you cannot rank a covers album of your own material above the records it’s covering. The originals are better, and they’re better because they were made by young men who didn’t know what was coming.

Worth hearing once for the context. Not the album you reach for.

Key tracks: “Over The Wall,” “Into The Pit,” “Disciples Of The Watch”

13. Demonic (1997)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson (all guitars), Derrick Ramirez, Gene Hoglan

The most divisive record they ever made, and the one that splits Testament fans down the middle to this day.

By 1997 the band had lost Skolnick, lost Clemente, lost their major label support and lost a lot of the audience thrash had built in the eighties. Peterson responded by going considerably darker — Demonic is essentially a death metal album with Chuck Billy doing full growls across most of it, and Peterson playing every guitar part himself with no lead player in the band.

Gene Hoglan is on drums, which means the playing is never the problem. “Demonic Refusal” and “The Burning Times” hit genuinely hard.

The problem is identity. Strip out the melodic lead guitar and the clean vocals and you remove the two things that separated Testament from every other band in the Bay Area. What’s left is heavy, competent and largely anonymous — a good extreme metal album by a band who were capable of a great Testament album.

Peterson has never apologised for it, and shouldn’t. It’s the sound of a band refusing to make a nostalgia record at the exact moment nostalgia would have been easier. Respect the move. It’s still their weakest set of original songs.

Key tracks: “Demonic Refusal,” “The Burning Times,” “John Doe”

12. Souls Of Black (1990)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Greg Christian, Louie Clemente

Peak Billboard: 73

The rushed one, and everyone involved has admitted it.

Testament were booked onto the Clash Of The Titans tour with Slayer, Megadeth and Suicidal Tendencies. The label wanted a record out to capitalise. So they made one — fast — and it shows.

That’s not to say it’s bad. The title track is a legitimate Testament classic and remains in setlists for good reason. “Face In The Sky” and “The Legacy” are strong. Skolnick’s playing is characteristically excellent.

But hold it next to what came immediately before it and the drop-off is obvious. The riffs feel like first drafts. The songs run out of ideas before they run out of runtime. Several of them sound like they’d have been fixed by another month of writing that nobody had.

It’s the one album in the classic run where you can hear the business rather than the band.

Key tracks: “Souls Of Black,” “Face In The Sky,” “The Legacy”

11. The Ritual (1992)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Greg Christian, Louie Clemente

Peak Billboard: 55 — their highest chart position of the eighties or nineties

This is the one that gets people shouting, so let’s do it properly.

The Ritual is Testament’s highest-charting album of their first two decades. It produced “Return To Serenity,” which got actual radio play. It sold around 250,000 copies. By the metrics the industry cared about, it’s their most successful early record.

It’s also the moment the band lost the plot, and they know it.

The Ritual is a Black Album record. Not derivative exactly, but unmistakably shaped by what Metallica had done in 1991 — slower, cleaner, more melodic, hooks pushed forward, aggression pulled back. “Electric Crown” is a very good song. “Return To Serenity” is a genuinely lovely ballad. Skolnick’s playing throughout is beautiful.

And it isn’t why anyone fell in love with this band.

The cost was catastrophic. Skolnick left after it, citing musical differences and heading toward jazz. Louie Clemente left too. The classic lineup was over, and it would be sixteen years before the two guitarists made another studio album together.

Peterson has since described this period as the band’s darkest. A record that charted highest and cost them the most.

Key tracks: “Electric Crown,” “Return To Serenity,” “So Many Lies”

10. Titans Of Creation (2020)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Steve Di Giorgio, Gene Hoglan

Peak Billboard: 13

Gene Hoglan’s last Testament album, released in April 2020 — which is to say, released directly into a pandemic that cancelled every show that would have supported it.

It’s a good record that suffered from circumstance. “Night Of The Witch” and “Children Of The Next Level” are strong, the playing is immaculate, and Hoglan going out on this rather than something lesser is fitting.

But it’s the least distinctive of the modern run. Where Dark Roots Of Earth had a sense of occasion and Brotherhood Of The Snake had genuine ferocity, Titans sits comfortably in the middle — Testament sounding like Testament, expertly, without pushing anywhere in particular.

There’s nothing wrong with it. On any other band’s discography it’d rank higher. On this one it’s the modern album with the least to say.

Key tracks: “Night Of The Witch,” “Children Of The Next Level,” “Dream Deceiver”

9. Brotherhood Of The Snake (2016)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Steve Di Giorgio, Gene Hoglan

Peak Billboard: 20

The fastest album of their late era, and the one where Gene Hoglan is most obviously off the leash.

Recorded under real pressure — the band have been open about the sessions being difficult and rushed by touring commitments — it channels that stress into pure velocity. The title track opens at a sprint and the record rarely lets up.

Steve Di Giorgio’s first album as a full member since The Gathering is part of why it works. His playing is busier and more melodic than a straight thrash record usually allows, and it gives the whole thing a slippery, technical undercurrent.

It’s a touch one-note across a full sitting, and a couple of tracks blur into each other. But as a statement that a band thirty-three years in could still play this fast and this angrily, it did its job.

Key tracks: “Brotherhood Of The Snake,” “The Pale King,” “Centuries Of Suffering”

8. Low (1994)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, James Murphy, Greg Christian, John Tempesta

The first album without Skolnick and Clemente, and by rights it should have been a disaster.

Instead it’s the most underrated record in the catalogue.

Faced with losing the guitarist who defined their sound, Peterson didn’t try to replace him with a copy. He brought in James Murphy — a death metal player from Death and Obituary — and let the band get heavier, uglier and considerably more modern. The result is groove-laden and genuinely menacing in a way Testament hadn’t been before.

“Low” and “Dog Faced Gods” are as good as anything they made in the nineties. Chuck Billy starts experimenting with the growl that would define the next decade. Tempesta’s drumming is brutal and precise.

It didn’t sell, because nothing thrash sold in 1994. But go back to it now, without the context of what it was supposed to be, and it holds up better than most records from that graveyard period.

Key tracks: “Low,” “Dog Faced Gods,” “Trail Of Tears”

7. Para Bellum (2025)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Steve Di Giorgio, Chris Dovas

Their fourteenth album, released October 10, 2025 via Nuclear Blast, and the debut of drummer Chris Dovas.

Forty-two years in, and this is a genuinely restless record. Peterson described the direction as thrash crossed with NWOBHM, black metal and heavy blues, and for once that isn’t press-release nonsense — Para Bellum moves between blackened aggression, classic eighties lead work, a ballad, and grooves that don’t sound like anything else in their catalogue.

Dovas is the story. He’s a significant injection of youth into a band whose rhythm section had been settled for a decade, and his playing reshapes the compositions rather than just supporting them. “For The Love Of Pain” and “Infanticide A.I.” open the record with genuine intent.

BraveWords named it their number two album of 2025, which tells you the reception was not polite deference to veterans.

It’s ranked here rather than higher for one reason: it’s a year old. Records need time to prove they’re not just exciting. Ask again in five years and this may well have climbed.

Key tracks: “For The Love Of Pain,” “Infanticide A.I.,” “Shadow People”

6. The Formation Of Damnation (2008)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Greg Christian, Paul Bostaph

Peak Billboard: 59

The comeback. Nine years after The Gathering, with Skolnick and Christian back in the band for the first studio album since 1992.

The weight of expectation on this record was enormous and it met all of it. From the opening of “For The Glory Of” into the title track, it announces itself as the sound of a band that had been away, been ill, been broken up in all but name — and had come back with something to prove.

Skolnick’s return is the headline, and he plays like a man making up for sixteen years. “More Than Meets The Eye” and “The Evil Has Landed” are modern classics that have never left the set.

It’s slightly overlong and the back third loses some tension. But as a resurrection record it’s very nearly perfect, and it bought this band the second career they’re still enjoying.

Key tracks: “More Than Meets The Eye,” “The Formation Of Damnation,” “The Evil Has Landed”

5. Practice What You Preach (1989)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Greg Christian, Louie Clemente

Peak Billboard: 77 — their commercial breakthrough

The record that made Testament a proper band rather than a promising one.

The shift from The New Order is deliberate: less occult imagery, more social and political lyricism, cleaner production, and a real emphasis on Chuck Billy actually singing rather than barking. “Greenhouse Effect” is an environmental protest song from a thrash band in 1989, which was not a common move.

The title track is one of the great thrash songs, built on a riff that has outlived several genres. “Sins Of Omission” is arguably the finest thing Skolnick ever played on. “The Ballad” showed a band who could handle dynamics without going soft.

Why isn’t it higher? Because in smoothing the edges to reach more people, they lost a fraction of the danger that made the first two records feel like a threat. It’s the more accomplished album. It isn’t the more thrilling one.

Key tracks: “Practice What You Preach,” “Sins Of Omission,” “Greenhouse Effect”

4. The Legacy (1987)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Greg Christian, Louie Clemente

The debut, and one of the great debuts in thrash.

Most of it was written when the band was called Legacy and Steve Souza was singing. Chuck Billy joined in 1986, learned the material, and delivered it with a power that immediately made the songs his.

Alex Skolnick was seventeen when this was recorded. Seventeen. He’d studied under Joe Satriani and it shows — the leads on “The Haunting” and “Alone In The Dark” have a melodic sophistication that basically nobody else in thrash was reaching for in 1987. Everyone else was playing fast. He was playing music.

“Over The Wall” remains the definitive Testament opener and has closed or opened shows for four decades. “Burnt Offerings” and “First Strike Is Deadly” are relentless.

The production is thin by modern standards, and a couple of tracks show their age. But the raw material is extraordinary, and it announced a band who had something nobody else in the Bay Area did.

Key tracks: “Over The Wall,” “The Haunting,” “Burnt Offerings”

3. Dark Roots Of Earth (2012)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Greg Christian, Gene Hoglan

Peak Billboard: 12 — the highest-charting album of their career

The best late-period thrash album any of the Bay Area bands made, and it isn’t especially close.

Where The Formation Of Damnation was about proving they could still do it, Dark Roots Of Earth is about what they do with that permission. Gene Hoglan’s first Testament studio album since Demonic transforms the band — he plays with a controlled violence that pushes everyone else up a level.

The songwriting is the thing. “Native Blood,” “True American Hate,” “Rise Up” and “Dark Roots Of Earth” are as strong a run as anything on the eighties records, and the production finally gives Skolnick and Peterson the space their interplay always deserved.

It charted at number 12, higher than anything they’d managed at their commercial peak — twenty-five years after their debut. That doesn’t happen by accident.

If you want to know whether Testament still matter, this is the album you hand somebody.

Key tracks: “Native Blood,” “True American Hate,” “Rise Up”

2. The Gathering (1999)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, James Murphy, Steve Di Giorgio, Dave Lombardo. Produced by Andy Sneap.

The cult favourite, and the one that gets called their best more often than any album except the one above it.

Look at that lineup. Dave Lombardo on drums. Steve Di Giorgio on fretless bass. James Murphy on lead guitar. Andy Sneap producing. On paper it’s a supergroup; in practice it produced the heaviest, most focused album of their career.

The Gathering takes the extremity Demonic was reaching for and marries it back to actual songwriting. “D.N.R. (Do Not Resuscitate)” opens with one of the most violent riffs in the catalogue. “Down For Life,” “Three Days In Darkness” and “Riding The Snake” are relentless. Chuck Billy’s vocal — moving between clean power and full death growl — is the best performance he’s ever put on tape.

There’s a shadow over it. Shortly after release, James Murphy was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He recovered after fundraising paid for surgery, but has said he cannot remember recording the album at all. Two years later Chuck Billy had his own diagnosis. The band effectively stopped for most of a decade.

So The Gathering stands as the last thing they made before everything went wrong — and it’s a monster.

Key tracks: “D.N.R.,” “Down For Life,” “Three Days In Darkness”

1. The New Order (1988)

Lineup: Chuck Billy, Eric Peterson, Alex Skolnick, Greg Christian, Louie Clemente

Peak Billboard: 136

The best Testament album, and one of the ten best thrash albums anybody made.

Everything the debut promised, delivered. “Trial By Fire” is a perfect opener. “Into The Pit” is ninety seconds of pure, uncut aggression and remains one of the most reliably devastating songs in live metal. “Disciples Of The Watch” has a riff that could level a building. “The Preacher” and “The New Order” don’t let up. Even the Aerosmith cover — “Nobody’s Fault” — works, which it had no business doing.

What separates it from everything around it in 1988 is the guitar playing. Skolnick, still a teenager, plays with a melodic intelligence that nobody in thrash could match. He isn’t fast for the sake of fast. He builds solos that go somewhere, in songs built to hold them.

And Chuck Billy is fully himself here in a way he wasn’t quite on the debut — the phrasing, the power, the sense of a frontman who could carry a room.

It didn’t chart as high as Practice What You Preach. It didn’t chart as high as The Ritual. It’s better than both, and it’s better than everything that came after.

Thirty-eight years on, this is still the record every thrash band is measuring themselves against without admitting it.

Key tracks: “Into The Pit,” “Disciples Of The Watch,” “Trial By Fire”

We Also Recommend – Welcome to the Pit: The 13 Essential Thrash Metal Albums Every Beginner NEEDS to Hear

The Full Ranking

1. The New Order (1988)
2. The Gathering (1999)
3. Dark Roots Of Earth (2012)
4. The Legacy (1987)
5. Practice What You Preach (1989)
6. The Formation Of Damnation (2008)
7. Para Bellum (2025)
8. Low (1994)
9. Brotherhood Of The Snake (2016)
10. Titans Of Creation (2020)
11. The Ritual (1992)
12. Souls Of Black (1990)
13. Demonic (1997)
14. First Strike Still Deadly (2001)

If you want more of these, we’ve done the same for Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Slipknot, Korn and In Flames.

And if you’re following the wider thrash story in 2026, Anthrax return in September with their first album in a decade while Megadeth are three years into a farewell tour. Testament, meanwhile, just made one of the best records of their career at forty-two years old.

Draw your own conclusions about who won the Big Four argument.

Also Check Out – Thrash Metal’s 13 Greatest Bands Ranked — The #1 Pick Still Sparks Debate

TL;DR

• Best Testament album: The New Order (1988) — the peak of the classic lineup and one of thrash’s essential records
• Most underrated: Low (1994) — the first post-Skolnick album, and far better than its reputation
• Highest charting: Dark Roots Of Earth (2012) reached No. 12 on the Billboard 200, twenty-five years into their career
• Most divisive: Demonic (1997) — a near-death-metal record with Eric Peterson playing every guitar part
• The compromise record: The Ritual (1992) charted at No. 55 but cost them Alex Skolnick and Louie Clemente
• Newest: Para Bellum (2025), the debut of drummer Chris Dovas, named BraveWords’ No. 2 album of the year
• Only constant member: rhythm guitarist Eric Peterson, present on all fourteen albums. Chuck Billy has sung on every one since joining in 1986
• Total: fourteen studio albums, one of which (First Strike Still Deadly) is a collection of re-recordings

FAQ

Fourteen albums, four decades, and a band who arguably should have been the fifth of the Big Four. Where does your ranking differ — and which one did we get wrong? Let us know in the comments.

Want more like this? The Loaded Radio stream runs hard rock and metal twenty-four hours a day — grab the free Loaded Radio app on Apple iOS and Google Play, or listen right here.

The post Testament Albums Ranked: All 14 Studio Records From Worst To Best, Including Para Bellum appeared first on Loaded Radio.

The trio had been rather quiet as of late.

The post Wakrat (Rage Against The Machine) Announce Anaheim Show With Breaking In A Sequence appeared first on Theprp.com.