Testament : Riding the Snake

Let's kick the week off with a bang. I first heard this song on the metal channel on Sirius Satellite Radio and it blew me away. It was heavy without being too metally, like early Metallica or Helmet, and they've got Dave Lombardo drumming for them on this album.

Dave is a drumming machine. He started with Slayer and currently performs with Fantômas. His technique is perfect, while still being super-fast and phenomenally heavy. Every beat is perfectly in place, but he still manages to avoid sounding like a machine. Part of conveying "heaviness" in music is using what John Cage once called "grace". It's the ability to play around a note, to add just a little syncopation, to bring life to the music. In this case to drag it a little behind the rhythm, which builds the weight behind the beat. John Bonham was a master at this, which is why he is the best rock drummer to ever walk the earth. Neil Peart, while being a technical master, does not understand grace and does sound like a machine, which is why he is not the best rock drummer (Q.E.D.).

Dave is up there as far as drummers go. He would certainly give John a run for his money, but then Dave never drank himself to death by choking on his own vomit. So John's got him on that one.

Regardless, the entire album is just super-heavy & technically flawless and it rocks like nobody's business. Definitely one of my favorite finds in the past couple of years and it easily ranks in my top 100, although it probably tops the list for ugliest album covers of all time. From 1999, Testament's The Gathering.

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