Souls of Black by Testament

Souls of Black, Testament's fourth studio album, landed on Atlantic and Megaforce on October 9, 1990, with the Berkeley thrashers' classic lineup still standing: Chuck Billy roaring, Eric Peterson and Alex Skolnick trading riffs and leads, Greg Christian on bass and Louie Clemente on drums. It still thrashes hard, but it keeps stretching, carrying on the technical, progressive streak of Practice What You Preach while hinting at the more traditional heavy metal that would follow on The Ritual.

A lot of the material was older than it sounds: songs demoed in the late '80s and never released, now torn down, rebuilt and given new words. Those words go after society, politics, religion, suicide, megalomania and war. They cut it at Fantasy Studios again, but for the first time someone other than Alex Perialas, who had produced their previous three albums, was at the desk: Michael Rosen took over, and the band charted well on the Billboard 200 once more.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.