Transcript of an interview I recorded with CHUCK BILLY of TESTAMENT - 20200408. Full article here. MAL-
Talking to Chuck from TESTAMENT. Thanks for taking my call Chuck. CHUCK- Yeah, thanks for having me man. MAL- It's a great pleasure to be talking to you again. How's your health going, Chuck? CHUCK- I'm going good. You know it's getting better every day. You know first couple of weeks after we got home from our European tour, we were a mess. You know, just got hit hard with the Coronavirus and been feeling better for the last week and getting more energy every day and you know, headaches are going away and feeling normal, start to do normal things again. But we're still staying quarantined kind of doing the right thing and just write this out. MAL- Crazy world we're living in at the moment. CHUCK- Madness. MAL- Back when we were able to go outside we were all looking forward to TESTAMENT coming over and doing the Download shows but that got thrown in the can but some people, like yourself, hit worse than others. CHUCK- Yeah, you know, unfortunately that Yeah, we held on as long as we could. I mean, I know Once the download was cancelled, they were even trying to reshape some shows around town, smaller shows, but then that didn't pan out, so in the end, it's gonna pull the plug on everything, which is kind of a shame. We're looking forward to that. It's been a, I think six years since we've been to Australia, so it's time to get there. MAL- Everything that's gone on, had that changed the release date of the new album at all? Or did just things just go on as planned. CHUCK- No, we carried on because the promotion already started. We already released it we're already into the motion. So yeah, we figure also it's it's a time where there's a lot of people that are sitting around and have time on their hands, why not give them something new, you know? I know it'll probably affect our first week's physical record fails because you can't go out and buy the record but it'd be interesting to see the results of the digital sales as people have been trapped. MAL- Yeah, once again crazy times we're living in. Tell us about the process for the album did anything change this time around for the band or keep doing it? You found a system, you're slotted in? CHUCK- Different process definitely this time around than from 'Brotherhood'. You know, maybe it had to do with we came off the SLAYER reunion farewell tour. I mean, and I don't know, maybe we just were fired up coming off of that tour going into writing the record and taking some time off. And, you know, I think we really focused on getting it done. But we really just focused and wrote a lot of riffs and a lot of music and lyrics and patterns over a lot of stuff and really kind of until we got into the studio really started putting it together and making it really solid. So a lot of this stuff was you know, this time around especially vocally was created basically in the studio just kind of mumbling our way through it and finding words and phrases and timing here and there and going Oh, I like that like keep with that, you know, just kind of built it really was like, I guess, the gut instinct, you know, it's kind of the first impulse is what we kind of stuck with. So in that sense, you know, it really didn't have time to kind of look at it and second guess it overthink it, I guess really. MAL- Just occurred to me last night listening to the album again how it's been quite a while since some brotherhood of the snake coming out. Have we got SLAYER to blame for that? CHUCK- Yeah, yeah, cos we were supposed to start earlier, you know, we wanted to have a two year gap and get another record. And then you know that that tour came up to affecting us, well, we can't pass that up. You know, if you get asked to do SLAYER farewell tour of course we got to be there, you know. MAL- But you must be happy now about at least two things. One- that the album's out, Two- that it sounds great. You've got to be happy with the way it sounds. It sounds, if I use an Australian term here. It's a ball-tearer. CHUCK- It's a what? MAL- It's a ball-tearer. CHUCK- I think this is probably one of Andy Sneap's, best mixes. You know, I mean, he really did a good job mixing this record. MAL- Any stories behind any of the songs that you wanted to share with us? CHUCK- Well, I mean, there's one like City of Angels. That's where I'm, I was really trying to get that record off, or that song off the record. I really was fighting to try to write it and put lyrics to it or even think about it. Because I thought at first it didn't fit. It wasn't like, thrashy enough or fast enough, and I thought it maybe didn't fit the album. And when we were writing lyrics, I write with a friend of mine down in Southern California, I told him about the song and I didn't want it to make the record but he wanted to hear it still. And he ended up giving me some lyrics that he already had written. And I read it over the song and t actually fit. So I actually took that song back home and recorded it a couple days later. And you know, never doing it before I just kind of let it roll and kind of made my way through it. But what I noticed while writing that song is I found another kind of voice or texture of voice that I use for that song and I did try doing some harmonies in there and a few parts and you know, I never do that stuff before but it just made me get a little more creative on that song. So it ended up being once we finished recording that song. We're like, wow, that's turned out really good. Way better than I thought and I really got it at that point. And I was like, wow, this song, I was fighting to get it away from the record and now look at it. It's one of the standout tracks. MAL- Absolutely. I'm glad you kept that on the album. I've got a little asterisk next to that on my notes here. It's probably my favourite track off the album. CHUCK- There you go. It's funny the way it made its way found its way to the album. MAL- It's funny the way things work out sometimes. CHUCK- Yeah. MAL- There's some excellent playing on that album as well, some of the drumming from you know, Gene, but we're used to that. And some guitar work from Alex just really stands out, he's amazing. CHUCK- Yeah, Gene did a great job on this record, and, you know, actually surprisingly, Eric did an amazing job too on lead, he plays a lot of leaves on this record, you know, he's got a lot of songs, you know, so, you know, he stepped it up in that department. MAL- 'Night Of The Witch' is another one of my favourites. Where did that come from? CHUCK- That one that was another one that was kind of created in the studio. But, Eric, when I was working, writing the lyrics, had said, write a song about a witch. I said, Eric wants a song about a witch, I'll write a song about a witch. So we wrote it and the part on that song when Eric does the chorus part, I actually tried to write that out of the song because I didn't think that part fit me as well. And I wanted to, you know, Eric wanted to keep that riff in the song. So I told him, Well, then you're gonna have to sing that witch part, and when he did, it really made a good contrast between his voice and my part where I come right back in after he sings we're just doing a really good texture and contrast together. MAL- You mentioned before about the production, it was Andy Sneap you mentioned, one thing that struck me the band still sounds, and I mean this in the nicest possible way. The band still sounds angry, and that's good. CHUCK- I don't think they're angry, but I think so. I think we're still writing aggressively. MAL- All right, maybe aggressive is a better word then. CHUCK- Yeah, well, I mean, it's thrashy. I guess that's what that's what our roots are, what we try to instil in a lot of tunes are just, you know, keeping that old school thrashing feeling. MAL- How do you feel about the state of thrash in general at the moment? CHUCK- Well, I mean, there's more and more thrash bands coming out that resemble, you know, 80s thrash, but with metal now, there's just all kinds of different genres of it. But, you know, I still like bands that really play thisfaster pace, but with, you know, more of a melodic kind of vocal approach to it. MAL- What happens now for the band, as we mentioned before, unprecedented times. We're all like caged animals, sitting at home. It's gonna be crazy when we're let out again. CHUCK- Right? Well, we're just kind of taking it day by day. I know. You know, our Australian tour's cancelled. Some of our American tours gonna be cancelled and we're kind of waiting to see how European festivals kind of, you know ends up going down that line looks like might be cancelled. So it kind of just taken a day at a time. You know, we've been planning on putting together a tour for September. So we're just going to keep on carrying on trying to finish you know, booking that tour and hopefully things let up by then. MAL- Hey, Chuck from TESTAMENT thanks so much for taking my call today. Best of luck with the the new album 'Titans Of Creation'. Sounds great. And best of luck with that, and hopefully we can all get back out on the road sometime. CHUCK- Yeah, we hope so. And when the world starts moving again and people get back to feeling normal, it will be awesome. But in the meantime, people need to stay home, you know, isolate themselves and listen to the new TESTAMENT record. MAL- Chuck thanks for your time, man. All the best for your health and everyone in the band. Hope to see you out on the road soon. CHUCK- All right, take care, man. Comments are closed.
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AuthorMetalhead who hates bad parking. |