TESTAMENT – Seen Between The Lines

A lot has changed since 1991, not the least of which is the way video entertainment is perceived. With the technological advancements made in the recording and video industries over the last decade, so many of your favorite videos and movies have been given a whole new breath of life; on-screen commentary and behind the scenes interviews have become expected fare. So when it was announced that Seen Between the Lines, a Testament fan favorite, was going to be released on DVD, expectations began running wild.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for your anticipation of greatness to come to a grinding halt. The grainy picture looks every bit as grainy as the original, and the sound is atrocious. The audio portion is taken directly from the camera mikes and not from the board; there is an audio set-up portion on the DVD, but as Ole’ Uncle Olaf used to say, “You can’t polish a turd”… and there is no denying, this turd stinks.

Blessedly, the concert portion of this DVD is short — six songs to be exact — two tracks each from The New Order, Practice What You Preach, and Souls of the Black. There are also four promotional videos, including the very funny “Nobody’s Fault.” They then move on to off-stage band footage, including dinner at a sushi den, a ride on a passenger train, and visiting a Japanese Temple. The band seems terribly uncomfortable in front of the camera in these social settings. Whenever the camera swings by any member of the band, he gives a raised eyebrow acknowledgement or the ever-popular middle finger. The middle finger is so popular, in fact, there is a video montage of anyone and everyone band-related giving their middle fingers to the camera, quite often with a pirate-like snarl. Now if you were watching this in 1991, it would be quite possible that such actions were mildly humorous; but assuming you are no longer fifteen, there is a good chance the laugh factor has long worn off.

One of the few new, and quite possibly the best feature on this DVD, is the band biography. Besides that and the four promo videos, this offering falls quite short of the mark. For a band that has been in existence for more than twenty years, there has to be literally hundreds of hours of video footage, both live and backstage. Also, where are the rest of the promo-videos? At the very least why wasn’t “Trial by Fire” included here? There are probably licensing agreements and all sorts of red tape to go through in putting something like this together, but for the fans’ sake, isn’t it worth going that extra mile to release a quality product? In the end, this looks like a quick way to make a buck and it makes one realize a lot has changed since 1991… like a band that used to revolt against “The Machine”… now just becoming another cog in it.