CHUCK BILLY Reveals New TESTAMENT Songtitles, Says Upcoming Album Is 'One Step Up As Far As Aggression'

In a new interview with Nikki Blakk of the San Francisco, California radio station 107.7 The Bone, TESTAMENT singer Chuck Billy spoke about the progress of the recording sessions for the band's follow-up to 2020's "Titans Of Creation" album. Chuck said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We've been here [in the recording studio] for — I don't know — a couple months now, and we're getting ready to leave for Europe in July. So we've gotta get everything done in June. So it's our goal to finish everything this month.

Asked how many songs will appear on the new TESTAMENT LP, Billy said: "There'll probably be 11 tracks, and then we have some covers that we've done. And we actually did a couple of re-recordings, a song off [TESTAMENT's debut album] 'The Legacy' and a song off [TESTAMENT's second album] 'The New Order', just to have a newer version. And we re-recorded them… Just one song off of each album. Our thought is, 'Okay, we're pushing the remasters. Why not pick a song off each, and then let's mix them, make them sound current, and just maybe put that out there to maybe push those products. I don't know… These will just be total separate just for fun, marketing."

Elaborating on the timetable for the completion of the new TESTAMENT album, Chuck said: "We've took off from November last year to write the record. It took a while. We just got in the studio in May and June. So we're finishing up. And right now, once we leave [for tour] in July, we won't really have time until December, which is a good thing. We'll be busy, but we'll have like a week or two between tours to do any extra overdubs or anything. We're gonna live with the record, which is really the first time we get to do this, because usually we'll record it and it's written in stone where now we know… Usually we have Andy Sneap mix it and he's not available. So we kind of have some time to select somebody else. But in that time, we're gonna live with the songs and come between tours to make any adjustments or changes, if we have to… We go to Europe and we come home in August and we start the U.S. tour. So we have 10 days or 11 days there before we start. And then after that, we have about 10 days before we start a European tour with KREATOR and ANTHRAX, and that'll go through December 16th. And then we're home for the holidays. And then we'll start thinking about mixing and finishing, getting it out there next year."

Regarding when TESTAMENT fans can expect to hear the first taste of the new material, Chuck said: "We hope to have a single maybe, just towards the end of the year. Give whoever we select [to mix the album] one song, 'Let's see how you do, see if we're happy,' before we do the whole record maybe. It's a pain in the butt, but it's still a little more convenient for us this time."

As for the musical direction of the new TESTAMENT material, Chuck said: "The record is very aggressive. With this one, we have a new drummer, Chris Dovas, who's really putting a fire under Eric [Peterson, TESTAMENT guitarist and main songwriter] and really, really got some really heavy, fast — I don't know if it's the word 'modern', maybe. I don't know, but… 'Current', how about that? Current-sounding. So, Chris is adding to that.

"I never know what the record is gonna be until we mix it," he explained. "'Cause they're all just individual songs, and I go, 'Okay, they're great.' But until we mix it and listen to it as an album, that's when we realize, 'Wow, this came out better than I thought. Wow, this is really good.' But this one, I'm excited going in before the mix, because I just know each song is one step up from the last record, as far as aggression, maybe."

On the topic of the songwriting process for the new TESTAMENT record, Chuck said: "Chris has been coming out since probably December, maybe a little before that, and going to Eric's house; he's got an electric drum set there. So they've been working, writing, putting all this stuff together. And at the beginning of May, once Eric started tracking, we decided that, let's bring Alex [Skolnick, TESTAMENT lead guitarist] and everybody in' except for Steve [DiGiorgio, TESTAMENT bassist], 'cause he's on tour, let's bring Alex and everybody here to the studio and let's just go through all the music, all the songs and make sure we're all happy with the arrangements. And every song got changed as well. Once Alex got here, we all started putting our heads together till we were all happy with the arrangements. And then he left and we said, 'Okay, Chris, now here's the new stuff. Let's do it and track it.' And he knocked it out last month, and now it's the rest of us that [are tracking our parts]. So we've been a little more thoughtful on this record. We have the time to do it. So I think it's gonna be a killer record."

Speaking about Dovas's involvement in the songwriting process with Eric, Chuck said: "A lot of it is Eric's riffs, but they're put in the proper places or cut out if we don't need it. And it's good for me because I didn't really get to sit with Eric. I just let them guys jam and just come up with as much as you can and we'll sort it out later, which that's what they did. But once Chris came out, then we knew, okay, it has to change or we're gonna just have the same record, and maybe we wouldn't be happy when it was all done. And also Eric's actually been going to New York — he actually went to work with Alex out there, which he hasn't done that in the past. And I think having Chris be available because like Gene [Hoglan, former TESTAMENT drummer] or whoever we worked with didn't have the time to come up as much as Chris has. Chris has spent a lot of time here, which has been good and really pushing Eric to make music. And we're at a point now to where Eric's, like, 'You know what? This has been fun. I think I'm just going to keep bringing Chris out. Let's just keep writing songs. Even after this record's done, let's just keep making songs,' which I think is great because that means we can get a jump on the next record. 'Cause not spring chickens. It's, like, let's get it done now while we can."

As for the lyrical themes covered in the new TESTAMENT songs, Chuck said: "[It's] not as focused [on], like, the aliens, creating mankind and that kind of stuff, but there is some of that. There's a lot. Each song definitely has its own identity lyrically. And again, we're writing stuff that is real, that happens with the environment; we're singing about that again. A.I., we're singing stuff about that. That's a big thing. So, there's always an inspiration for songs. I think it's a little easier. There's so much going on in our world to write about now. It's a crazy world today, so there's a lot of stuff to talk about. And I like singing about what's real and what's going on instead of some fantasy lyrics, because, for me, I think when I sing 'em, I have more conviction, I believe in 'em a little more. And maybe it's easier for me to remember the lyrics live. [Laughs]"

Naming specific tracks, Chuck said: "There's a song, 'Havana Syndrome', which is about the Havana Syndrome. People, look that up. There's 'Infanticide A.I.', which is another song going A.I. direction. And there's actually a slower song. We haven't done a slower song. I'm not gonna say 'ballad', but I'm gonna say a slower song that has a lot of groove and soul, called 'Meant To Be'. And it's like a classic TESTAMENT-type ballad, I guess, if you wanna use that word. But we've got a little bit of everything, but, again, I think it's really sticking to TESTAMENT, having to have some melodic stuff, even though there's some really brutal lyrics and real brutal, more of a death voice. I still put the hook in with more of a melodic hook or something. It's still classic TESTAMENT. If you listen to it, you'll go, 'That's TESTAMENT, but a little more octane to it.'"

Last month, Chuck told Canada's The Metal Voice that he writes most of TESTAMENT's lyrics with Del James. "Del, he works with GUNS N' ROSES," Chuck said. "He's been working with them and wrote with them a long time ago. I think he had big hits like 'November Rain' with them. And we've been working [together] for over 20 years. So I always go down and work with him because I come up with a lot of the ideas and concepts, but he really interprets and gets the right words, how to say what I'm thinking. And we work fast. When we get together, we'll knock out like two songs in a day. So we don't mess around. We get there, say hello to each other, we sit down and we go right to work. It's about what we do."

Chuck also talked about how TESTAMENT's songwriting approach has evolved in the last couple of decades. He said:  "I honestly have to say after I beat cancer [more than two decades ago] and we had the original lineup back together, everything kind of changed because… We've always been in a friendly competition with other artists, watching what's going on and who's doing what. And I think around that point, once we got together and I felt like… I didn't think I was gonna play music anymore, first of all, and once I had the chance to get back with the original band, I felt very blessed, like, 'Wow, I'm getting an opportunity to do what I love to do again, but also with the guys I started with. It's kind of odd that we're gonna go back at this now, maybe try to finish something that we all started together.' And once we did that, it was enjoying our company. We never fight. We never argue. It was just, like, relaxing. And the critics, we didn't care what the press thought or a lot of people. I mean, we wrote for ourselves. So a lot of those records were just making us happy. The songs we were writing, we weren't thinking about, 'Okay, this has to be, for this,' and 'where's our radio song?' and 'What's the fans gonna think if we went and did a ballad?' All that went out the door. And I think over the time, it's really just about making good music, having fun at this point. And every record is a challenge 'cause you always wanna do better and make the next record sound better, have better songs. And I think where we're at today, once again, especially having Chris, the new drummer, we are progressing. Me and Eric actually said, like, I don't know, about three weeks ago, we were hanging out and like I said, the music's pretty aggressive and we're doing some heavy stuff, and he said, 'Did you ever think, in our sixties, we're gonna be playing thrash metal music, writing songs like this?' And I'm, like, 'Actually, no,' but that's a good thing that we still feel young at heart and young in our minds and still we're not struggling to do it."

In January, Skolnick told Radioactive MikeZ, host of the 96.7 KCAL-FM program "Wired In The Empire", about the progress of the songwriting sessions for TESTAMENT's new LP: "Well, we got delayed a little bit by the fact that 2020 basically didn't exist [due to the coronavirus pandemic]. It's a year that went away. And then there was so much touring to make up for. And for about a year of that, we had Dave Lombardo [ex-SLAYER] on drums, which was fantastic. And he's become a great friend and a great musician, but he's also spread very thin in many different bands. And now we have Chris Dovas [playing drums with us]. And he's a guy old enough to be any of our sons. But he is just unbelievable. He really brings the right energy. I mean, he brings the energy that the music had in the early days."

Last August, Dovas was asked by Pod Scum if it was "unnerving" to step into a group whose list of previous drummers includes such heavyweights as Lombardo and Gene Hoglan. He responded: "It was, especially at first because I knew that a lot of eyes were on me, and also I looked up to the band since I was a kid. Especially Lombardo and Gene — those are two of my favorite drummers right there. So to be put in that situation of taking over for them, I felt like I had a lot of responsibility and a lot of… I felt like I had something to prove a little bit, and I'm still practicing a lot and I just wanna do the best that I can do. Right now I'm not really nervous anymore because I've done two full tours with them now and we're working on the [new TESTAMENT] album and the friendship has been developing now and we all get along super well. They've welcomed me with open arms and it's been great and the fans have been great. I've been putting hours and hours of practice into it to make sure that I can do the best that I could do. And I look up to Dave and I look up to Gene as well, so, yeah, I just wanna play the songs well live and keep making the band sound good."

Asked what his role has been so far in the creative process for TESTAMENT's next album, Chris said: "I don't know exactly what I'm allowed and what I'm not allowed to share yet, but what you've seen publicly, though, right now is that Eric and I have been working on a lot of stuff together. And so it's been really cool to get into their brains, in a way, and how they write stuff. I'm used to people sending me tracks with scratch MIDI drums or programmed drums or something, and I've gotta put my drums to them and then hop on a Zoom call and we can edit things and move stuff around. But with them, Eric and I, he set a timer at one point for, like, 20 minutes and we would just jam random ideas. And then sometimes we'd make mistakes and stuff and that would be cool, and we could take that… It's very organic, though, and it's very involved, I guess. It's a different way of writing and I'm super excited to be a part of that method of writing. And I could see why they're so successful for all these years, now finally being a part of this current writing cycle, I guess."

Prior to joining TESTAMENT as a full-time member, Dovas previously filled in for Lombardo on the first six dates of TESTAMENT's summer/fall 2022 leg of "The Bay Strikes Back Tour".

Photo credit: Stephanie Cabral