UMUR "Practice What You Preach" is the 3rd full-length studio album by US, California based thrash metal act Testament. The album was released through Atlantic/Megaforce Records in August 1989. The band enjoyed great success with their first two albums, and they were on a roll at this point in their career, which they took full advantage of by releasing their third album in little over two years.

"Practice What You Preach" is what I´d call a natural progression from the first two albums. Stylistically it´s slightly less raw sounding, a little more melodic, features a cleaner sounding production, and overall just sounds a bit more professional. The music style is still thrash metal with the distinct sound that Testament were known for in those days, but they´ve incorporated a few more traditional heavy metal elements here than they did on the two predecessors. The opening title track is one of the highlights, but the material is generally well written, although not as immediately catchy as much of the material on the two predecessors. The quality does drop a bit the longer you get into the album though, and to my ears the first five tracks (Side 1 of the vinyl version) are the strongest. After that the songwriting becomes a bit more patchy.

The cleaner sound production (and especially the clicky kick drums) has the effect that the music sometimes lacks a bit of punch and rawness though. It´s almost as if the cleaner and more professional sounding production isn´t doing the music any favors.

The lineup is still the same as the lineup who recorded the two predecessors, and therefore we are treated to the same highly skilled lead guitar playing by Alex Skolnick, the powerful and distinct sounding vocals by Chuck Billy (a little more melodic oriented this time around), but unfortunately also the clumsy and one-dimensional drumming by Louie Clemente. So no surprises there. Overall "Practice What You Preach" is another quality thrash metal release by Testament, but to my ears it´s a slight step down in songwriting quality from the two more immediate and raw sounding predecessors. A 3.5 star (70%) rating is deserved.

Kingcrimsonprog Practice What You Preach is one of the crowning achievements in Testament’s long and excellent career. The band started off strong and continued to release strong material. This, their third studio album introduced a wider array of lyrical topics, vocal styles and guitar melodies to their already impressive formula.

With songs like ‘Sin Of Omission,’ “Nightmare (Coming Back To You)” and the impressive Title Track it is no wonder why people still love this record and band.

Every musician is on top form, with exciting lead bass sections, melodic and impressive guitar solos, furious drumming and Chuck Billy’s fantastic voice all gelling perfectly together to create dynamic and interesting music with both enough harsh and heavy metal credibility and thoughtful melodic sections to appease most sections of the metal listening public.

Testament represent all the best traits of the Thrash Metal movement and provide an excellent standard of musicianship, songwriting, virtuosity and (for the time) production value that was of the best quality without being overblown and commercially sheened.

You will frequently read the sentiment that it is a great shame Testament never broke as big as Metallica, Megadeth et al and listening to any Testament album you will find yourself agreeing, this isn’t something people just blindly say like sheep, Testament really are legend-quality even if they unfortunately never achieved a legend level of success.

To conclude; If you like Metal you really ought to check out Testament, and if you like Testament then you really ought to check out Practice What You Preach.