Souls of Black

Background

Souls of Black preceded several changes in style to rather diverse styles of metal, including the traditional heavy metal sound heard in its succeeding album, The Ritual. The songs on the album are musically re-worked and lyrically re-written songs that had been demoed in the late 1980s, but never officially released.

One of the main reasons behind the making of Souls of Black was so that Testament could participate in the European Clash of the Titans tour with Megadeth, Slayer and Suicidal Tendencies, which began just prior to the album's release. Guitarist Eric Peterson explained to Guitar World magazine, "We kind of rushed out Souls of Black just to get on the bill, because we didn’t want to miss the tour and our label said we had to have an album out. We had done some touring with Slayer that year, and we did shows with Megadeth two or three years prior to that."

Reception

Reviews for Souls of Black have generally been mixed. Allmusic's Alex Henderson awards it two-and-a-half stars out of five, saying "Testament sounds very much like it did on its three previous albums and is as heavy as ever", while he added that Souls of Black "isn't in a class with The New Order, but is nonetheless a welcome addition to Testament's generally rewarding catalog."

The album entered the Billboard 200 album charts on November 3, 1990, peaking at number 73 and remaining on the chart for eight weeks. Souls of Black is also seen as an influential guitar album, being ranked number nine on Guitar World magazine's top ten list of guitar albums of 1990.

Trivia

A re-recorded version of the title track appeared on the 2008 video game Rock Band 2.

Credits