One drummer starts the show. Another finishes it. That is the strange, almost theatrical detail at the heart of Testament's Live in London, the thrash-metal concert recording released on November 1, 2005. The San Francisco Bay Area band had built its name on fast, precise riffs, but this night at the Koko club in London carried an extra question: who would actually be behind the kit?
Tempesta hands over to Clemente
The answer unfolded song by song. John Tempesta played from the opener The Preacher through the eighth track, Trial by Fire. Then the original Testament drummer, Louie Clemente, stepped back in for Practice What You Preach and stayed until the final song, Disciples of the Watch. The whole show was captured on May 8, 2005, the third night of a short tour called 10 Days in May.
Why split the drumming at all? The facts point to a reunion, not a regular gig. The lineup that evening was the original Testament five: vocalist Chuck Billy, bassist Greg Christian, drummer Louie Clemente, and guitarists Eric Peterson and Alex Skolnick. Skolnick also sang backing vocals, while Peterson handled rhythm guitar. For a band that had cycled through members for years, getting all five on one stage was the story itself.
A setlist built on the early albums
The setlist leaned hard on the old days. Songs came from early albums like The Legacy, The New Order, Practice What You Preach, Souls of Black, and The Ritual. The show opened with The Preacher and closed with Disciples of the Watch. This was a set built for people who wanted the classic Testament sound. The running order moved quickly through that early catalog. After The Preacher came The New Order, then The Haunting and Electric Crown, before the set reached Sins of Omission and Souls of Black. Later, the band worked through Let Go of My World and The Legacy on the way to the closing stretch. The full set ran just over an hour, clocking in at 66 minutes. The DVD also gave listeners three different audio mixes to choose from.
The London show was released on CD and DVD at the same time, on the Spitfire Records label. The DVD offered three different audio mixes and a short interview with the band, plus backstage footage. Andy Sneap handled the mixing. For fans, the CD was the main event: a live document of a lineup that had rarely shared a stage in the years before.
Mixed reviews and a Netflix release
Critics were not entirely won over. Stylus Magazine gave the release a B−, a grade that suggests respect without wild enthusiasm. The reviewer's problem was not the songs, but perhaps the strange mid-show switch: a concert that starts with one drummer and ends with another can feel less like a band and more like a passing of the torch, even when the torch goes back to the original holder. AllMusic also weighed in on the release, adding another professional take to the conversation. The album was distributed in the United States, and it even reached viewers through Netflix as a video-on-demand and direct-to-video title.
In the band's discography, Live in London sat between First Strike Still Deadly and The Formation of Damnation, the studio album that would bring a proper comeback. The live record caught Testament in between: not yet fully reformed, but no longer content to be a memory. The original five were in the same room, playing the old songs, even if the drum stool changed hands halfway through.
Two drummers, one night, fourteen songs. That is the fact worth remembering 21 years later. It was not a clean reunion, not a polished greatest-hits run. It was a band testing whether the old chemistry still worked, and the answer, song by song, was loud enough for a London club to hear.
It was a band testing whether the old chemistry still worked, and the answer, song by song, was loud enough for a London club to hear.