TESTAMENT’S LIVE LEGACY

Is there a consensus on which Testament album is their best? Do they have a Reign in Blood or Among the Living, an album where (almost) everyone just kinda goes “Oh, yeah, that’s their best album.” I don’t think so. I kinda think they’re more of a Megadeth-type sitution, where a lot of people say Rust bot a lotta people say Peace Sells and they’re both kinda right. I think with Testament, you can go The Legacy or The New Order or Practice What You Preach and make a pretty fair argument in all instances.

Which is my very roundabout way of telling you that Testament are going to be playing The Legacy live, in its entirety, on their upcoming tour with Slayer and Megadeth, which is called the American Carnage Tour but should really just be called The Big Three or some shit (And P.S., fuck you if you argue that Testament can’t be one third of a Big Three tour. They’re fucking Testament, not Attitude Adjustment.)

So, uh, why The Legacy, which isn’t even turning twenty this year or whatever? Chuck Billy tells KNAC.com:

We did it last year, over in Holland, and then we did a show in London. And that show we did The Legacy and The New Order back to back, just like on the records, song after song. It was awesome. It was such an awesome deal. It turned out way better than we thought. It was killer. So, we were rehearsing for this tour, and at one point we were like, “Man, we’re not playing this and we’re not playing that. Ah, shit. We only got 40 minutes; you can only play eight songs, so it’s tough to pick eight songs. We’re leaving so many good ones out.” And we were like, “You know what? Since we’ve already toured a year and a half with Priest, we did our own headline, we did so much stuff out there, why don’t we go out there and do something different? We’ll give ‘em a whole different stage look…let’s give ‘em The Legacy album, start to finish.” It’s a nostalgic kind of tour, so why not?

And good for Billy for just being honest, ’cause nostalgia is as good a reason as any to do something like this, and it explains why the band would choose the slightly older record even if just as many people love Preach. Yes of course the Big Three tour is a good chance for the young ‘uns to see three legendary bands together they may have never seen before, but it’s also most definitely an excuse for the old farts to pretend that they’re not fat, gray, married, miserable, and in a band that’s basically Anvil if no one wanted to make a documentary about Anvil.

And that’s why the Big Three tour is pretty much an unbeatable ticket: everyone wants to go (or should want to go), and no one is gonna wanna miss a second. I bet this is the only tour where as many people are there at the start of the night as there are at the end of the night.

-AR