LIVE REVIEW: TESTAMENT + SNAKE MOUNTAIN @ THE TIVOLI 18/06/25

Words by Stephen Goodwin. Photos Charlyn Cameron.

If one, single moment could encapsulate tonight’s Testament show at The Tivoli — the opener for the Bay area thrasher’s first headlining club tour of Australia since 2010 — it comes near the end of Over the Wall as the song switches gears, and swings into its key solo.

Eric Peterson steps up to join Alex Skolnick and, as his fingers sweep up and down the fretboard of his guitar, vocalist Chuck Billy and the damned-near-entire crowd instinctively mimic the line — singing alongside the notes with falsetto woah-oh-ohs.

For sure, this happens at a lot of Testament shows; their inherent melodicism encourages it. But the spontaneity feels less significant than this wondrous collision of virtuoso guitar skill and the earnest emulation of the scratchy throats of a thousand or more grizzled punters: chiming in, we can in that moment, feel we own a part of Eric Peterson’s sublime technique. And who here tonight hasn’t wished for that? No-one, I tell you.

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Earlier, Gold Coast five-piece Snake Mountain warm things up with a sharp, no-bullshit 30-minute set of enticing, groove-driven metal. Their bottom end is enormous, while the hoarse, shrieking voice of frontman Nev dominates the upper registers as he prowls the stage with hulking menace and cutting hand gestures. Still, guitar solos occasionally peek through, and a creepily taut circular thing on their second tune, Veins, is a stand-out.

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A near-full Tivoli is proof that Testament have come some way since their first visit to these shores in 2007 when they played to maybe 300 people in the run-down beer barn that used to be attached to the old Waterloo Hotel. In part, maybe, that’s the general renaissance of metal as a genre but it’s indisputable that they’ve also done the hard yards by putting out a slew of acclaimed studio albums in the meantime (four, and soon to be five, to be precise).

Tonight, however, they open with a ripping rendition of that Testament classic, Practice What You Preach.

It's immediately obvious that Chuck Billy's vocal chops are tuned to perfection tonight as he screams and growls his way through the song. The crowd laps it up as Skolnick, Peterson and bassist Steve Di Giorgio step up to complete a full-frontal audio-visual assault at the very front of stage — Di Giorgio’s booming “PREACH!” on the chorus exploding out with near-physical intensity.

Sins of Omission and The Pale King rapidly follow: the new and the old juxtaposed and equally compelling even as Skolnick and Peterson casually throw out guitar licks for the cameras, and Billy shows off some prime air guitar.

It's a tactic they repeat throughout the night to superb effect. Sometimes it's Peterson stepping forward, more often it's Skolnick, and occasionally it's both to play as a harmonised duo. The latter, exemplified by the very end of The Haunting, produces the kind of virtuoso shredding to make even the most reserved fan drool uncontrollably.

Later, The Formation of Damnation brings — at Billy’s express bidding — a barrier-to-sound desk wall of death moment that seems to be the cue for the crowd to loosen up and start sending a conveyer of crowd surfers over the front barrier.

Over the course around 90 minutes, Testament criss-crosses nine of its massive 13-studio-album back-catalogue, hitting numbers like Rise Up, Trail of Tears, Low, First Strike is Deadly and more. There’s as much “new” as “old”, and a solid mix of what I think of as pure balls-to-the-wall thrash, like D.N.R., and more melodic efforts — exemplified by a rendition of Return To Serenity which draws a beautiful crowd singalong for its melancholy “I feel so alone my head is my home” chorus.

Nearing the end, Electric Crown’s bluesey base is cunningly hidden by Skolnick’s jaw-dropping solo, and that piercing four-note guitar line from Peterson that opens each verse. More Than Meets The Eye brings back the heavy with its immense, galloping percussion courtesy of drummer Chris Dovas.

Over the Wall (see above) proves a completely impromptu setlist addition (it seems they omitted WWIII mid-set), before Testament fittingly wrap the night and transform the pit into a piranha feeding frenzy with thrash anthem Into the Pit.

View our gallery from the night here.