Testament - Para Bellum ★★★☆☆

OCTOBER 2025 

THRASH METAL / EXTREME METAL

FOR FANS OF: WARBRINGER, KREATOR, ANNIHILATOR

        THRASH-O-METER        

★★★★★★★☆☆☆ SONGWRITING

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ LONGEVITY

★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ THEMES

★★★★★★★★☆☆ PRODUCTION

★★★★★★★★☆☆ MUSICIANSHIP

★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ CHARACTER

★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ THRASHABILITY

                SCORE:                   

★★★☆☆ GOOD SH!T

Testament’s every bit as much an institution as the top biggest thrash bands. You're nominally aware when they're tourin' or releasing a new sh!t. By now I'm sure that you've read it elsewhere that "Para Bellum" is quite an album!

I mean, yeah, it is I suppose, but I think we've drifted quite far away from thrash metal.

Maybe it’s the new blood, Chris Dovas, behind the kit, but everything is noticeably faster now - beyond fast, almost absurdly fast. Uber-fucking-fast. Speed metal? Forget about it. This is full-blown extreme metal. It’s faster than some of the blastin' you get with symphonic black metal, and that should give you a sense of just how relentless this thing really is.

New Testament

From the very first moments of For the Love of Pain you’re hit with a visceral shock - sh!t that's so immediate and overwhelming that it’s hard to even process what just happened. There’s no easing in into the album, no polite introduction, just pure impact. Infanticide A.I. takes a savage swing at our culture’s obsession with artificial intelligence, and as the first single, it kinda hinted at the kind of chaos the full album might unleash.

Here ya go: old band photo from Metal Archives

Even so, I wasn’t prepared for the sheer intensity of the experience. Then came Shadow People, the second single, which finally offered a glimpse of a more familiar Testament.

By that point, it was becoming clear that this wasn’t just about speed or brutality, but about carving out a new, sharper version of their sound.

A lopsided album

Biting into this thing for a number of weeks now I find the latter half of the album a great deal better; its more thoughtful, focused and actually has some proper songs. There's a kind of groove in Nature of the Beast that contrasts with the start, hard. Room 117 is my favourite track on the album, combining melody and evolving naturally on the theme. With appropriate shreddage and falling back to form, you're reminded how good these fellas can be writing 'em songs.

Chomping on "Para Bellum" I didn't specifically get a coherent feeling for it. I mean, this is their nth album, so you've kinda spoken your piece already I guess. Its not as much about how strange the location of the ballad Meant to Be feels, but more about how it feels like just some collection of random songs - it feels disconnected, lacking vision. I mean, there's even a goddamn cowboy themed song on the album.

Chuck Billy is undoubtedly among the best vocalists of metal music - take a look at that ballad there, and then jump headlong into anything else on the album. The guys do a good job here. Sure, I kinda miss Gene Hoglan, but what the hey - like I said, the young blood in the cans is prolly something the old geezers needed to keep going.

"Para Bellum" is a surprise for sure, and beyond that, I think the guys have discovered new kind of energy to build upon. Good on them! As a thrash metal album however I think that we've veered so far off from the reservation that the path under our Converses is plain unrecognisable. It’s relentless and precise, sure, but the soul gets lost somewhere along the way.