Test – O Jogo Humano

2021: 3rd Full Length, European Version

As their name implies, Test is all about experimentation: this album takes inspiration from the ​marchinhas: a type of music common in Brazil’s street carnival which consists of various songs with non-stop percussion satirizing particular parts of society.

It’s mainly a form thing, though: the songs don’t have a clear beginning or ending. Also, throughout the album there’s never-ending drumming, every now and then accompanied by guitars and vocals. Song titles are also uncommon – mostly words or sentence snippets. One good way is to think of it as Cortázar’s Hopscotch (if Cortázar did blast-beats, which he didn’t; so, Test’s more hectic).

The idea is for the album to work as an interactive game, with the listener joining words (song titles) to form phrases and come up with his/her own version of the songs, which somehow end up sounding like “real”, fully-conceived, tunes. Which is even more impressive considering the band is just a duo (João [G/V] and Barata [D]). Vinyl and cassette versions of the album will have pre-built songs, different for each country/zone they’re released into.

This is European version co-released by:

Hecatombe Records (SPA)
R.A.W. Records (BRA)
Raging Planet Records (POR)

Structure aside, Test sound fiercer than most extreme music these days. Although minimalist in terms of band formation, nothing is lacking in this version of death metal. The songs on ​O Jogo Humano ​ are stripped of anything irrelevant to the sheer aggressiveness​ ​ displayed here.
The lyrics deal mostly with human failures, and they, too, were composed differently: their authors are musicians in other bands, not necessarily death metal. There’s samba-punk-metal musician Kiko Dinucci, Jair Naves of NavesHarris/Ludovic, and Lirinha from mangue-beat-samba-folk prodigies Cordel do Fogo Encantado, to name a few. Each writer received just a song title to work from, unaware of how the song would sound.

O Jogo Humano ​ was recorded, produced and mixed by João at his home studio, and mastered at Audio Siege (Portland) by Brad Boatright (Sleep, Full of Hell, YOB)

Test is:
JKombi: Guitar/Vocals
Barata: Drums

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