Pestilence's "Testimony of the Ancients" should be in The Infinite
Pestilence's classic third full-length has never sat all that comfortably under the tech death tag in my opinion as it's really not all that technical & is clearly more progressive due to its expansive take on the genre. As a result, I'd like to see 'Testimony of the Ancients' added to The Infinite under the Progressive Metal tag on top of its position in The Horde.
This nomination has been posted in the Hall of Judgement.
I consider Testimony of the Ancients the transition album between Pestilence's early standard death metal in Consuming Impulse and their progressive death metal sound in Spheres. The tech-death side of this progressive/tech-death coin would go on to be the band's main sound for the albums they're released since their 2008 reformation. The album would also solidify their position in the prog-death metal Big 4 alongside Death, Atheist (with those two bands' 1991 albums as well), and Cynic (with their debut Focus two years later). Those albums really made history with the rise of prog-death metal in 1991, and I once gave those game-changing releases a small meme:
Anyway, back to the main point. Am I going to give this Hall entry of Pestilence's 3rd album a YES vote? The answer is YES.
For the record, I don't consider any of those band's classic releases to be technical death metal. They're all progressive death metal records in my opinion. The incorrect use of the tech death & tech thrash tags has long been a source of annoyance for me & is one that I'd like to clear up in the Academy database at some point but have had to simply accept until such time as we have an avenue to make the required changes.