An Interview With Testament’s Chuck Billy

The Covid-19 outbreak has not treated thrash metal legends Testament well. First the band were forced to cancel their trip to Australia for the Download Festival and then in a bad twist of fate lead vocalist Chuck Billy came down with the virus himself.

When I get a chance to chat to Billy about the band’s brand new album Titans Of Creation he is recovering at home and says he is feeling so much better. “You are always chasing your last mix,” Billy tells me when we move away from his health and begin to talk about the goals that the band set for themselves with Titans Of Creation. “As far as song writing though you never know what frame of mind you are going to be in when you sit down to write music.”

“I know on this album though the process was much smoother than it was on the last album,” he says continuing. “Brotherhood took a couple of years to write and then we had to record it. But this time around it only took nine months of time, we really dove in and just got it done. We came off the Slayer farewell tour and I don’t know maybe we were just in a better headspace but we were really just ready to go. So we just focussed on getting it done, and it was definitely a different process this time around.”

And when Billy says that the process was different he doesn’t just mean in small ways. “A lot of the time we were going into the studio without even doing demos,” he says. “It was really coming to life and really came to together when we got into the studio. That was when we started arranging and finding the right range with the vocals. And I think that really helped us be a little bit more creative on this record. We were able to do some more on impulse rather than over-thinking it really.”

That change in process also meant that this time around the band were able to do a lot more face-to-face song writing than most bands would be able to do these days. “Everything kind of started with me and Eric (Peterson – Testament’s guitarist) getting together,” he explains. “Then Gene (Hoglan – drummer) would come up from San Diego, so most of us were working that way. I didn’t even hear any bass until we started to lay the tracks down. I listened to some tracks back and was like ‘woah there is bass there now with the vocals and drums.’”

Hearing Billy talk about the process makes it seem like it was a bit of a dream process but he says that doesn’t mean that there was no pressure there at all. “There was a little bit of pressure there,” he admits. “Because we did put ourselves under pressure just because we kind of went in there in under-prepared in a way. And it could have sounded like a piece of crap if we hadn’t of done everything right, but we were lucky that we had all the right pieces there and we had the time to put it all together and really focus and think about it.”

It is also very obvious that this is an album that Billy himself is so very proud of. “I just listened to the record and there is just so much that Eric gave me as far as riffs ago,” he says to me. “A lot of the songs really have their own identity and vibe.”

One listen to Titans Of Creation and you will also see that there is a range of different genres shining through as well. From the sludge metal aspect of “City Of Angels” and a real black metal vibe on “Night Of The Witch.” “You don’t really notice it as the process goes,” Billy tells me when I ask him whether the different sounds were something that the band were aware of when they were recording the album. “I know when we wrote “Children Of The Next Level” which was the first track that we wrote for the album it could have easily been straight off our Brotherhood album, it would have fit on that record. And for a moment there we were thinking that was perhaps the direction that we were going in but then the more songs that Eric gave me they started to have this whole new vibe that I never heard from him before. He was choosing chord processions that in the past I may have tried to change but I didn’t and it did make me feel a little uncomfortable in a creative way. “

“I had to use different voices that I had never used before,” he explains. “Like take “City Of Angels” for example I am doing a different texture with my voice on that song. I do a couple of harmonies and melodies on the bridge and I never do that kind of stuff but after all these years being able to be a little bit creative on this record was pretty cool.”

With many people calling this the best ever Testament album if you are a fan of their music then Titans Of Creation is an album you just have to own.