Riff Police! Pull Over! #85: Testament Vs Metallica!

New year, new artwork, same s*** everything else. Mind You. You keep coming back for more, so we can’t be doing that much wrong, can we? Just how long can the “Riff Police” feature go on? Well, how long is a piece of string? We’ve had Testament Vs Nuclear Assault and Testament Vs Lamb Of God in previous installments of this ridiculously long playing series (call it “Dances With Wolves” and move on) so how about Testament Vs Metallica? Well, alright then…

“Dark Roots of Earth” is the eleventh studio album by American (just outside of the big four, maybe big five, big six) Thrash Metallers Testament. Produced by Andy Sneap who mixed and engineered the band’s previous three studio releases, it was recorded over a seven month period from June 2011 to February 2012 before seeing a summer appearance and was subject to some bizarre happenings. First, former Strapping Young Lad drummer Gene Hoglan filled in for regular sticksman Paul Bostaph. Exodus vocalist Steve “Zetro” Souza then contributed lyrics to a pair of tracks and then the album became the last to feature bassist Greg Christian who exited stage left in 2014 for the second time. The song “True American Hate” was described by vocalist Chuck Billy as being “written about the prevalence of hatred, particularly anti-Americanism, in younger generations around the world, often perpetuated by their upbringing” and the album received critical acclaim for being fresh and not going over old ground. Well, not Testament’s old ground anyway. You see, we’ve heard something we’ve heard before in “True American Hate”. That is a riff from “One” by Metallica from the 1988 classic “…And Justice For All“… and incidentally, Chuck Billy says the upcoming Testament album has “a little bit of everything” in this interview with Blabbermouth.