Para Bellum Album Review

Nuclear Blast Records

By: Mathew Manseau

Testament’s most recent album keeps their music relevant while being excellent.

Since their first album, The Legacy in 1987, there has not been a single ‘bad’ song by Testament. Some songs may not be excellent, but the band has remained consistent and kept its style despite being around for 42 years. Not many bands can or have kept their style consistent for as long as Testament has. They are a great example of a Thrash metal band that shows how passionate the band members are for what they do, and their album Para Bellum doesn’t stray from their standard. With the album description, “Taken from the Latin phrase Si vis pacem, para bellum—’If you want peace, prepare for war’—the album stands as both a battle cry and an observation of humanity’s uneasy alliance with its own creations.” (Nuclear Blast Records.)

The song descriptions are organized in order of my most favorite to least favorite. Shadow People is a single that was released as a teaser for the full album and became my favorite in the album. It was inspired by the movie “Evil Dead Rise” when the members watched it in 2023, and the group felt that making a song centered around an unseen threat similar to the movie. “Evil Dead Rise” is about a mother who gets possessed and she gets progressively hostile towards her children which functions as a metaphor for modern-day problems, such as substance abuse and trauma which reflects the “shadow people.”

Infanticide A.I, is a song talking about AI and the dangers it could pose to humanity as our child.The song’s naming is heavily critical of AI and the name means humans should destroy the ‘child’ they’ve created which is any sort of generative AI before it gets out of hand. While also criticizing the use of AI in alternative genres such as metal which is a growing issue, Megadeth, White Sabbath, System of a Down and even Slayer have used or promoted AI art at least once. Considering that AI goes against much of what the bands write songs about, it’s hypocritical and upsetting that they use it. Most of the usage from 3 of the 4 artists I listed could be from the artists  not doing their own research on it: “Oh, a new software that makes free album art/videos instantly!” It is still unacceptable. Despite the backlash Megadeth had received, they continue to do so. 

Nature Of The Beast is a symbol of the Anti-Christ which is used to show how unethical it is to have an overabundance of wealth. The song displays the reality of living without any sort of privilege which is suggested by, “You lose it all and you don’t give a damn . . . the nature of the beast you’re never gonna win.” The Anti-Christ is compared to billionaires or people who go out of their way to use their immoderate amount of power for control. 

High Noon seems to steer a little off the theme, although it can be interpreted differently as a song about gambling and how as someone grows more reckless, they can end up losing everything. I like to think of it as a branch off from the rest. The song is mostly self explanatory with it being about a gunslinger in the Wild West who eventually sees his end. The song is fun and enjoyable to listen to and I really enjoyed it.

Para Bellum is surprisingly not as good as I expected; I thought the song was gonna be my favorite of the album but it’s one of my lower rated ones. The rest of the songs are not my favorites but are worth listening to. One of the choices I thought took away from how good the album could be was having a much more melodic and laid back song like Meant to Be.It is significantly different from the style the album has and feels very abrupt when it came on since the album is really quick and aggressive. Yet, it suddenly switches to a far different type that is also lyrically off the style of the other songs. Overall, the album is fantastic and one of the better Testament albums.