TESTAMENT Is Working On 'Killer, Kick-Ass' New Album, Says GENE HOGLAN

TESTAMENT drummer Gene Hoglan spoke to Agoraphobic News about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the follow-up to 2016's "Brotherhood Of The Snake" album. "Eric [Peterson, guitar] and I are in the process of writing it," he said (hear audio below). "We've got about six songs together. I scoot up to Sacramento every week, essentially — every couple of weeks — and Eric and I take three or four days and we lay down a bunch of ideas. And we've got about five to six serious formations of songs — big, fat skeletons. Nothing is quite finalized yet, because we'll be tweaking these until the album gets recorded, I'm sure. We could get in the studio and tweak a bunch of songs. So nothing is truly done until the album is out, but we've got six or seven ideas, five or six ideas — right around there. Alex Skolnick [guitar], he's bringing some killer ideas to the table too. So it's gonna be a killer, kick-ass TESTAMENT record. Everybody's gonna enjoy it. TESTAMENT has a good grasp on what TESTAMENT does, so it's gonna be just another kick-ass TESTAMENT record. Totally."

Peterson recently told Guitar World that he hopes TESTAMENT's next album will be a more collaborative effort than "Brotherhood Of The Snake", which saw him writing all the music in about three months and then e-mailing the songs to his bandmates.

Alex Skolnick told Heavy New York that TESTAMENT's new studio album, which is tentatively due later this year, will not necessarily sound like a direct follow-up to "Brotherhood Of The Snake".

"I think anytime we make a record, we don't think about the last record," he said. "That's done. Actually, the last thing we wanna be influenced by is the previous record. And I think it's pretty safe to say there's never been two records in a row where they're really that much alike. We don't have a 'period.' Sometimes bands release a pair or a series of records where there's a big similarity. We've never done that. So I think it's gonna be starting fresh. And we'll see where it goes… It's not pre-planned."

Last September, singer Chuck Billy told Inquisitr that TESTAMENT's next record would likely include a ballad. "We haven't done a ballad in 20-something years probably," he said. "I mean, a full-on ballad. 'Born In A Rut', off the other one ['Brotherhood Of The Snake'], it's soft and has melody, but it's not really a true ballad."

"Brotherhood Of The Snake" was recorded under the watchful eyes of producer Juan Urteaga (EXODUS, HEATHEN, MACHINE HEAD),Peterson and Billy and was mixed and mastered by Andy Sneap.