Practice What You Preach is the third studio album by Testament, released in August 8, 1989 via Atlantic/Megaforce. Propelled by the singles “Greenhouse Effect”, “The Ballad” and the title track “Practice What You Preach”, this album was a major breakthrough for Testament, achieving near gold status and becoming the band’s first album to enter the Top 100 on the Billboard 200 chart.
While retaining the thrash metal sound of its predecessors, Practice What You Preach saw Testament draw influences from numerous genres such as traditional heavy metal, jazz fusion and progressive/technical metal, and its lyrical themes are more about politics and society than the occult themes of the band’s previous two albums—these changes had alienated some early fans of Testament.
Songs like the title track and “Blessed in Contempt” relate to religion, while “Greenhouse Effect” is a political song about an “environmental holocaust”, “Sins of Omission” deals with suicide prevention, and “The Ballad” is about a break up and recovery.
Reportedly recorded live in the studio, this was the band’s last album to be produced by Alex Perialas, and the production values can be loosely compared to Flotsam and Jetsam‘s 1990 album When the Storm Comes Down, which was also produced by Perialas and recorded shortly after the release of Practice What You Preach.
Besides the title track, which has been a staple of the band’s concert setlists for more than three decades, Testament rarely plays any songs from Practice What You Preach anymore. Out of the album’s ten songs, “Confusion Fusion” is the only one that has never been performed in concert. “Envy Life” and “Sins of Omission” had been played live again occasionally in the 2000s and 2010s. The others however, including “Perilous Nation” (save for one show in New York in 2008), “Time Is Coming”, “Blessed in Contempt”, “Greenhouse Effect”, “The Ballad” and “Nightmare (Coming Back to You)”, have not been included in performances since the early 1990s.
Tracklist:
- Practice What You Preach
- Perilous Nation
- Envy Life
- Time Is Coming
- Blessed In Contempt
- Greenhouse Effect
- Sins Of Omission
- The Ballad
- Nightmare (Coming Back To You)
- Confusion Fusion
Testament
Chuck Billy: vocals
Alex Skolnick: lead guitar
Eric Peterson: rhythm guitar
Greg Christian: bass
Louie Clemente: drums
Additional personnel
Mark Walters: backing vocals
Bogdan Jablonski: backing vocals
Willy Lang: backing vocals
Elliot Cahn: backing vocals
William Benson: cover art
