Band:	Pestilence
Album:	Testimony Of The Ancients
Style:	Progressive death metal
Release date:	September 1991

01. The Secrecies Of Horror
02. Bitterness
03. Twisted Truth
04. Darkening
05. Lost Souls
06. Blood
07. Land Of Tears
08. Free Us From Temptation
09. Prophetic Revelations
10. Impure
11. Testimony
12. Soulless
13. Presence Of The Dead
14. Mindwarp
15. Stigmatized
16. In Sorrow

Grief and Sorrow is what I feel when I hear a Pestilence album without the great vocals of Martin Van Drunen, anyway a vocalist change is not good most of the times (I mean Sepultura, Cannibal Corpse, you get the idea?) and now this album is odd, not the Best Pestilence album for sure, in the songs the Death Metal parts are still there, but now with a lot of musical mixes (I swear I hear some jazzy parts), anyway let's see about this album?

The Goodies and Highlights:
Ok regardless the departure of Martin this album has it's good parts, the production is way better than "Consuming Impulse", cleaner sound, better distorted guitars, and in some songs even a good bass playing.

The lyrical content was no problem for Marco Foddis, he was the writer in the last albums also, so this one has the same lyrical content and themes as constantly in Pestilence discography. The songs sound more elaborated and complex, there are parts that seems to be so intended and so thoughtful (some times this stuff make the song not interesting and boring but we will get to that later)

The best of this album is the Great drumming, which now has a life of it's own, there are times when the drums are the only good thing in a song so bravo Marco Foddis you are the master of Testimony...

The No no's and stuff:
Well what about those interludes or whatever it is, I mean I thought the first ones where interesting but after "blood" I just though WTF this is so boring, Pestilence tried so hard to do an extremely experimental and technical album and they just screwed it up.

The vocals have no comparison with Martin, and the bass playing is incredibly poor, this only shows the anxiety of the band to find a replacement for Van Drunen, they just grabbed the first bassist they knew, but Hell man Cynic is not as brutal and as fast as Pestilence, so Tony Choy didn't reach the bass-lines that Pestilence was used to have.
Well I respect this album (or maybe I respect more the band It represents) so I will not go on talking crap about it, so that's all, I'll just say that I really was expecting more from Pestilence

Anyway if you wish to hear the best this album can offer try: "Land Of Tears", "Presence Of The Dead", Testimony, and that's about it, the other ones are just ok (not counting the interval parts).