Most Recent Release: Titans of Creation
Label: Nuclear Blast
Tour: https://metropolistouring.com/testament-2025/
or https://thephoenix.au/testament/
Band Website: http://www.testamentlegions.com/
Bay Area thrash metal band Testament have earned slew of awards across the music scene, and on an international scale. They are no stranger to our shores, having delivered numerous thumping live shows, either as a headlining act, or as part of many of the huge festival lineups that have traversed the country. Testament’s discography and musicianship is remarkable, and has consistently stayed true to powerful, metal music, sometimes even melding death metal styles with thrash metal.
Having last toured here in a headline capacity in 2010, then with festivals, and with more recent tours disrupted by the effects of the global pandemic, Testament are itching to return to Australia for a run of almost sold-out live dates. We caught up with the unstoppable vocal force that is Chuck Billy recently to discuss the impending tour, and all things from new and old Testament material.
Chuck Billy: Hey, what’s up, Paul? How are you doing, man?
I’m good, America continues to amuse and confuse.
CB: Yeah, but I love your shirt. Golf day, are you golfer?
Yeah, yeah, sorry. It’s an expensive hobby.
CB: It sure is, I’m a golfer myself.
I guess it’s exercise, right?
CB: Well, I guess if you walk the course, but I’d ride a cart.
Nice, ha-ha, okay. So, how’s your voice holding up these days? It’s obviously changed timbre over the years, but you’ve also been through the wars, and survived intact.
CB: I mean, it’s holding up, and I try to take care of it, and I think this year has been probably one of the tougher years of touring from making our record. Well, rehearsing to recording, making the record, going on tour, having a short break and still continuing. It’s really worked out my voice, that’s for sure. You know, it put it to the test. But so far, so good. You know, some nights, I think this last tour, some people spread the cold through the bus, so everybody kind of had this runny nose. When you’re not feeling well and your nose is running, and you’re coughing, you know, it gets rough. I had a week or so where it’s kind of scratchy and it really hit hard and I was tired, but then, you get a couple days off and get right back on and go, you know.
Indeed, and these days are you still doing the high-pitched thrash styled squeals?
CB: I am. I’m doing a little of everything. On this last tour, I’m doing a lot more of the screams like you’ve heard on “The Preacher” [The New Order] and “The Haunting”, or “First Strike is Deadly” [both from The Legacy]. I’m doing all those scream parts in those songs and voice is feeling good. I’m doing the death metal stuff; mid-tempo, mid-voice and the screaming. So, you know, I think after so much touring, you get to a point where you can. I can do that, but I have to build up to that, you know, I can’t sometimes come out of the gate.
Certainly. I’ve noticed with metal that there’s more grunting and death growls. When you started doing it with albums like Low and Demonic, in the 90’s, how was it taken in the thrash scene?
CB: Well, I don’t know about the thrash scene, but I think there’s a new audience, maybe that we’re heavier, with extreme metal lovers. But then there were some classic Testament fans on the Internet that were asking, ‘oh, what are you doing? Where’s the “Souls of Black” voice?’ But it also crossed us over to a different fan, and it was something. At the time, we were kind of changing because that Low record was coming. It was our first record back after the departure of Alex [Skolnick – lead and rhythm guitar] and Louie [Clemente – drums], and we were winding down to the end of our contract; a couple more records with Atlantic. Times were changing, the music scene was changing. We’ were starting to get a little angry at the industry and just wrote some more angry music. Then it just really developed into the Demonic record, which was really heavy and angry, and then, you know, things changed once we went out of that record, into The Gathering with new life in the band, new material, new labels and new deals, and so things changed.
Well, speaking of new material, it must be getting near to the next album because you generally have four years, it seems, between albums, at this point.
CB: Yeah, it’s done, and that’s going to end. We’re going to write records sooner now and quit that break. But, you know, we always tour a lot on the records. We get two years or more out of a record cycle. I know Eric [Peterson – rhythm and lead guitar] and Chris [Dovas – drums] had a great writing process. This time, Chris spent a lot of time at Eric’s house, and they’ve already said, ‘this year we’ll take Christmas off, and in January, Chris, you’re coming out [to my house]. We’re going to jam and start writing some more songs.’ So, they’re already thinking about writing the next record, which would be awesome to get a jump on having a bunch of that stuff ready to go. I’d rather put out more music instead of waiting.
How would you say the songwriting process has changed over the years?
CB: Well, it’s changed only because of the Internet and the accessibility of everybody having home studios to do their parts, send them in, or be living close enough in the Bay Area to do it. Plus sharing stuff, writing, doing demos – that way is a lot different now. Sending stuff back and forth is it, and we all don’t live in the same area, so we all just don’t go to the studio. It’s, as case of I’ll call you up, I’ll see you down the studio in an hour, you know, and everybody’s spread out, so that’s the biggest change. But I think the thing that’s always continued and been the way as it’s been from the start is that Eric is always been the main starter of the riff, and the song and the creation of that. Then sometimes, that’s when I’ll step in and go, ‘well, I don’t hear me singing over that part,’ or, you know, ‘I don’t like that,’ or whatever.’ So, that’s kind of how it starts. But now having Chris and Eric just jam works, and that’s what we wanted to them to do – it was not to necessarily sit down and say, ‘let’s write a song,’ but to say, ‘let’s just jam.’ They would, they would go out, have drinks at the bar, come back, with a little buzz and just start bashing it out just like the old days. So, this record has a lot of energy, and I could tell there’s a lot of riffs. So, they had a lot of good sessions, and it came out really well. It is different. But I think all the Testament records come out differently. This one, once again, is a different Testament record. But you would know it is Testament once you start listening.
How do you find working with external producers as opposed to self-production?
CB: Well, we still produce ourselves to a certain point, I think. I don’t know if it’s just because that’s just what we’ve been doing over time. We have somebody else mix it, but we do all the tracking and get all that stuff; write the songs, arrange everything. But as far as we usually have, we just get it done and then send it to somebody to mix, then comment and work it out until we’re all happy, you know, with the final mix.
Then you’ve got to organise a set list for a tour, which must be fun these days.
CB: That’s always the hardest part, you know, because it depends on how much time we have and what we’re doing. Sometimes in summer festivals you get an hour to play 50 minutes and it’s hard to pick 10 songs to play out of 100 or even 150 songs and it gets tough.
Everyone wants tracks from the first bunch albums as well.
CB: We do cover a lot of that. We definitely put songs in our set, such as “Into the Pit” [The New Order], in our show. Ever since that song came out, it’s always been in the set, it’s never been out of the set. So that’s always a classic. It’s always in there, as is “Over the Wall”. That song usually makes it in there a lot, as does [album title track] “The New Order”. But then I think we enjoy playing a lot of the current stuff from around The Gathering, forward, because I think that’s kind of where we had a breath of new life. Testament, after making that record and being ill, and beating the illness and getting a reunion of the original guys and then getting to make music on from that point was a change for the band and a new life, because we were writing for ourselves, not necessarily what for people thought. I think that was kind of the beauty of making it, really a variety of songs; songs that created the records. We weren’t concerned with what the press or somebody was going to think about it. We were writing it because we enjoyed it and we’re very happy with it. We were not thinking, ‘oh, we can’t go that way or go and do that.’ People aren’t going to like it, or they’re going to critique it and criticise it. So, I think that’s what really made everything of the records from The Formation of Damnation onto our current records. They all stand on their own, I believe, when you listen to them.
Agreed and presumably it’s one of those things where, even with bands in the Big Four [of thrash metal], and with Testament as part of the Big Eight, those former bands are now in that same mindset. They’ve worked out how to do it themselves long ago, and they don’t really care what people think, and yet people come with them.
CB: Yeah, I mean, at certain point, yeah, especially after bands have been around as long as all of us, you grew up. It’s especially so through the writing within the band and the sound, you know them.
So, what are your recollections of the Bay Area thrash scene in the early days?
CB: We didn’t know what was being created or exactly what we were experiencing. We’re just kind of thought it was the norm, you know, from going to so many shows and having that opportunity. Maybe we thought it was like that everywhere until we had the opportunity to travel and talk to people. Everybody was asking, ‘what’s the Bay Area like?’ But it was a great place to be in a band, especially creating this kind of style of music. It was definitely an early breeding ground.
I guess the curious thing is that Testament has had a number of members from Slayer in the lineup over the years, as well as touring members from Megadeth and others. So, there’s all this crossover that’s happened.
CB: Yeah, we’re all in bed with each other. But, you know, I think that just shows you how far back a lot of bands like this have been together and we’ve all got history together. Sometimes it’s the right people to have jamming with you. They get it, they know it, they understand it, they’ve lived that, you know.
When you took over from Steve ‘Zetro’ Souza way back when, was there an expectation to deliver that kind of vocal style or did you just bring your own thing?
CB: I definitely brought my own thing when I joined the band. Right at that time, I’d just finished taking maybe a couple of years of private lessons and got to a point where my instructor said, ‘okay, you need to go out now and find a band and audition.’ Steve was a friend of my younger brother, so I really didn’t have to go looking, it kind of found me. He said, ‘check out my band,’ and we used to watch them, you know, and said, ‘I’m thinking about leaving them and joining Exodus,’ and this was right in the timing of where I was trying to find a band as a singer. So he gave me Alex’s number; I called Alex and set up an audition with the guys, came down and I was already in the music scene, but I was more probably in the more lighter side of it back then, than the metal side of it. So, when I auditioned and got the gig, it was just this whole new thing and world to me, and especially trying to adapt to the vocal style of those first songs was an all-new learning curve. So, I was kind of in a crash course with Eric for the first year, going over through the songs, just working at it, getting it and then, you know, going out touring it, recording it, tour it. Then The New Order came fast a year later, and I got to kind of, all of a sudden, create what I’ve learned in a year. But that’s just the way it was back then; it was so new, fresh, fast and not really anybody to copy.
If you look at Metallica, they then went on a tour with Raven around the States, and soon after, Testament played a festival show, at a Dutch festival show, alongside Raven and Stryper, which must have been quite interesting.
CB: Yeah, there were fans throwing Bibles, the band throwing Bibles out and Bibles flying everywhere. That was our very first time we got to leave the country, and playing the Dynamo club the night before, then the festival the next day, out back in the parking lot. Of course, you’ve got to understand, we were just doing clubs throughout the Bay Area and the next thing you know we must have been playing to 25,000 people out in the back parking lot, and we’re recording it, and it was very special. I think I was the only one old enough to drink. So, everybody, once we got there, could drink at a younger age. So, everybody was loving it. Getting drunk, you know, young kids, that’s a worry, yeah.
You’re mentioning the later material as cemented or reinforced in Testament’s sound. Is there a particular album, say, since The Formation of Damnation that you’re quite proud of today?
CB: I’ve got say, each one has a special song that just hits me hard. One that’s like, ‘yeah, that one’s so good.’ I would have to say, from all of them from then on, I’d have to say Titans of Creation. That is because to me, the production, and the songwriting is clean and sounds good. The songs sound, to me, like what we started out from The Formation of Damnation to what we developed into now, you know, and not being afraid to try some different things. You know, songs like “City of Angels” [Titans of Creation], came out, and I fought to the end to not get it on the record. I didn’t want to write it, and it just happened and found its way to get done and make it on the record. So, there were some special things on that record that I enjoyed to being able to just put that on, listening to it through as a whole. I enjoy the way it hits me.
In true Testament style, the artwork for that one is quite striking. It is captivating much like the artwork for Practice What You Preach, and that’s pretty cool.
CB: Yeah, that’s always Eric and his visions in his head and ideas. We’ve worked with longtime artists Eliran Kantor, and, you know, he understands Eric’s brain. So, they’ve always been great. That record was kind of like we always kind of see the artwork and develop it, based on what we’re writing about and creating. Sometimes we’ll have a title to work with, but with Titans of Creation, we didn’t. So, he was just making the artwork, and we didn’t have a title for the record. So, we’re beating our head around for months and trying to figure out what’s this record going to be called, and then once we got the art, we’re looking at it saying, ‘okay, what is this? What does this say? What is the title?’ We couldn’t figure it out. But then in the end it was Titans of Creation, and first time Eric’s hit it, we’re like, ‘that’s it!’ So, looking at the art, it was Titans of Creation because we were trying to explain it; the story of two guys pounding the hammers out. You can see them forging creation coming out of the mountain, down in the people, starting to, you know, be created, and we’re like, ‘that makes sense, exactly what it looks like, Titans of Creation with two titans fighting, creating life. Okay, that’s it, indeed.’ We never wrote a song called “Titans of Creation” either, it just came because that’s what the artwork needed to be called.
Artwork for The Ritual was notable, spinning it around whilst listening to the album wondering, ‘what’s this about?’
CB: Right, yeah, that was always a strange artwork too. It is a little too clean now. We never do something like that now. It always seems to kind of be what would be a cool looking backdrop with the album cover. That’s kind of now our mindset. Now, if it’s like something really simple that works, we’re going to have it. Let’s have a dramatic scene up there or something. It is very cool, you know.
As of 2023, you’ve got a new drummer [Chris Dovas] and also, you’ve had bassist, Steve [Di Giorgio] in the band for a fair while. How did getting both Steve and Chris into the band happen?
CB: Well, Steve was started in the band in 2001 and did the Titans of Creation and The Gathering records with us and then toured for years. Then I became ill and once we had the reunion; we didn’t fire Steve but told him we would do a reunion tour. That developed and continued until Greg [Christian – early bassist] left. Once Greg left, our first thought was calling Steve on the phone, and Steve was fine, asking, ‘okay, let me know what we need to do,’ and came back. That was actually the first show at Soundwave for him.
So, with drumming and bringing Chris in, who he is very good, but I guess he’s a little bit younger compared to previous drummers of say Dave Lombardo and Paul Bostaph.
CB: Yeah, he’s definitely younger. He came in at 24 years old and he’s been with us for a couple of years now. He’s 26, still a youngster, but he comes in influenced by a lot of current music and younger, newer bands popping out there that he grew up with, you know, and knows, you know. So, his style and influences that he likes maybe pushed Eric a little in that sense of being inspired and try to do something cooler and different, which he did. Those two guys came up with some great, great chops and riffs, and it’s fast, and it’s heavy. It’s Testament, you know, so I was very pleased with the writing, and then as the songs develop vocally and lyrically, it’s like, ‘wow, this is, again, a different Testament record.’ Once again, Eric and company wrote and created ten to 11 songs that are going to be on the new record. It doesn’t sound the same at all, but they’re all really good. I’m pretty proud of it.
Great. Thanks for talking about the upcoming Testament tour. We will see you soon.
CB: We’re going to make it, man. I can’t wait. We’ll see you.