Testament’s Chuck Billy sat down with The Rockpit and explained why the band’s upcoming album feels different than the rest of their discography.
“Well, this [album is] gonna be very special. I think I’m more excited about this one, just because of the fact — the timing of everything. I’m a big person believer in things happen for reasons,” Billy explained. “And [new Testament drummer] Chris Dovas jamming with us and having a lot of time to come up and spend with Eric [Peterson, Testament guitarist] at Eric’s place, just jamming, coming up a lot of music and working on it hard and tracking it at home and doing demos.”
“And I could tell, when I first started getting the songs and the riffs sent, that it was something different,” he continued. “It’s still Eric and I recognize it, but he was being pushed and inspired ’cause Chris is a very fast, aggressive drummer, and I can tell that it just inspired Eric just to be Eric and play guitar instead of trying to think about building a song or making a song — ‘Let’s just jam.’ And that’s the kind of way they approached it. And next thing you know, they had 10, 11, 12 jams that were sounding pretty strong, but individually identified just different vibes. And I was, like, ‘Okay, this is what it is.’ And then, as it just built vocally and everything, that’s when we were kind of, ‘Wow. It just feels fresh and new and challenging again.”
The frontman also revealed that he’s got a wide range of tones in this album. “Vocally, for me, I’ve got a wide range of tones on this one — I’m screaming again, which I haven’t done that a lot on a lot of records in the past, but a lot on this one. And we are still writing for ourselves, but we’re still excited that when we write a song, how it hits live, and that’s always been the payoff, is do these songs we write in the studio hit live like we want ’em to? And that’s the fun part.”
The new album is almost done, and Eric Peterson thinks it’s an amazing record. “I’m super excited for everybody to hear it. It’s all over the place. It’s very focused, but there’s a lot of elements going on,” he said in another interview.
“I would say we’re, like, 95 percent done recording it,” the rocker revealed. “There’s some solos to do… Drums, bass [are recorded]. A little bit of guitars need to be done. Alex’s [Skolnick] got some solos [left to record], some solos for me. I think Chuck’s got, like, two or three songs left to do. But everything’s pretty much in the can. All the hard work’s done. So, we can definitely play it for people and go, ‘Look, we’ve got a record.'”
When it comes to more details about the album, Alex Skolnick says it will be turned in before the end of the year and will be ‘listenable’ next year.
