By Andrew Bansal
San Francisco Bay Area thrash giants Testament have enjoyed a resurgence as strong as anyone in recent years, with undeniably impressive albums ‘The Formation Of Damnation’ (2008) and ‘The Dark Roots Of Earth’ (2012). But for the sake of their younger fans who never had a chance to see them in their early years, Testament are revisiting their first two albums ‘The Legacy’ and ‘The New Order’ by playing them both in their entirety on the upcoming North American headline tour, plus selections from the third record ‘Practice What You Preach’. Testament are taking out fellow San Francisco thrash veterans Exodus as main support, and Texas metal six-piece Shattered Sun as opening act. The thrash extravaganza will hit Los Angeles on Thursday April 2nd, at House Of Blues Sunset Strip. Yesterday on March 26th, I spoke to vocalist Chuck Billy about this tour, the next album and more. Enjoy the conversation below.
Chuck, it’s good to have you again on Metal Assault. In this interview I’m mainly going to talk to you about your upcoming North American headline tour, where you’ll be playing songs only from the first three albums. First of all, how did the concept of revisiting only the older material come about?
Well, we’ve been touring a lot for ‘The Formation Of Damnation’ and ‘The Dark Roots Of Earth’ albums for a few years now, playing a bunch of different songs that we’ve written. We’re right now in the middle of writing a new record, and going out on this tour we thought may be it’s better we do something special for it, and different than what we’ve been doing, and also may be playing and reliving old songs like that might inspire some creativity towards new material. It’ll be fun for us. It’s always fun to try to rehash some songs that we haven’t played in a long time. It’ll be great to play them again!
Exactly. So, in preparation of this tour, how long have you been practicing these old songs, specially the ones that you haven’t played in a while?
It will take us probably about ten days of rehearsals. We know the songs well, but it’s just about making sure every riff and every note is right. Once the guys get it going, then it’s just about going at it over and over again, you know.
Right, so you think these songs will inspire the new material? As you said, may be that’s what you need sometimes, to get ideas for new songs.
I think it’s just the inspiration from when we created the first couple of records, just the excitement and the thrill, and what the mentality was behind writing those riffs. Don’t get me wrong, I love the new stuff, but I think may be a little more thrash influence could be put into it by listening to the older stuff.
That’s an interesting approach, for sure. And you know, older bands also sometimes re-record their earlier material, may be the whole album or parts of it. What do you think about that? Opinions on the matter are divided, but a lot of people think the original recordings should be left alone.
I wouldn’t re-record a whole album. I mean, I would love to remix a record, remix the original tracks that were recorded back then on those amps. That would be cool. We did ‘First Strike Still Deadly’ which was a combination of a bunch of songs that we decided to re-record, and we did it just because in 1986 when we recorded ‘The Legacy’, we didn’t know anything about recording or technique! We just put it all in the producer’s hands. From what we’ve learned by now over all these years, we know that we probably could have made those records
much better (laughs).
That’s what I was going to ask you. Do you think if you recorded ‘The Legacy’ now, it would sound better?
Oh, it would sound amazing. But it’s just that I don’t want to do the whole thing because there’s something special about us being that young, playing those songs, tuning that way. I wouldn’t want to redo the whole thing.
Right, that makes sense. And for this tour you’re taking out Exodus as main support. They’re going through a bit of a revival themselves with the return of their old singer. I think it’s a perfect combination for people attending these shows.
Yeah, it’s going to be good. We’ve been trying to tour with Exodus for a while and it’s finally happening. It’s nice that we’ll be able to bring the Bay Area thrash sounds of our own to people. I think it’s going to be exciting too because I see a lot of new, young fans out there listening to Testament and Exodus, and it’s cool that they’re going to be able to hear some songs that we’ve never really played in out set. The tour has got some specialty nights as well. Zet used to be in the band, so I’m sure he’ll pop up on stage and sing a couple of songs with us. So, it’s going to be fun!
Awesome, man. As you were saying in the beginning of this interview, you’ve been touring on ‘The Dark Roots Of Earth’ for a while and you toured quite a long time for the previous album too. For ‘Dark Roots’, are you pretty much done with that touring cycle and have you played everything from the album that you wanted to play live?
‘Dark Roots’ is probably the first record that we actually played a lot of songs off of when we went out on tour for it. Usually we play one or two songs off of a new record, three may be. But when we first started touring on this record, we did four or five songs right off the bat. It just felt good, you know. So, ‘Dark Roots’ is definitely a different record, bringing songs into the set.
It worked really well, I would say. You managed to do quite a few tours everywhere and people were enjoying the new songs as much as the old ones.
Yeah, I would love to go back after we do this Legacy/New Order/Practice What You Preach set. We did this a few times, and this might be the last time that we do it. If we were to ever say, “Let’s go and play a full record”, I would love to play ‘The Gathering’, ‘The Formation …’ or ‘Dark Roots’, something more current, because that’s really where we’re at today. To play those records I think would be awesome.
Absolutely. So, for this next album, you said you’re in the writing process. What stage are you at with that?
We’re pretty far along. Me and Eric have demoed about six songs, and he still has a bunch of licks waiting to go. Me and Eric have been doing it together because Alex has been busy producing a solo record, and Gene and Steve have been out with Death To All. So, when we get together next week, that would be the first time that we really get to sit down and go over the demos of the songs, and really kind of get everybody’s opinion and start working on it. So we’re going to spend a lot of time together over the next three months.
So it’s still very much a band effort in that sense. It’s not like the two of you just write everything, send it to the other guys and tell them to record their parts.
No, unless we write a song that we feel is complete, and nothing needs to be changed. Then it’s like, “Yeah, here’s a song. Learn it. When we’re ready to record, e’ll practice it and do it.” But where we’re at with the rest of these songs, I think there’s a lot of room for opinion, because me and Eric just did a lot of riffs and a lot of vocals. The skeleton is there, we just need to add some more parts and get some more opinions.
Very cool. And lastly, after this North American tour what’s in the works for you? Taking a break to finish the album?
No! We do five weeks in the US, take a week off a then go do five weeks in Europe. So hopefully over these next three months we’ll get to finetune the record and be prepared to go right off the road and get into the studio in July/August. But who knows, we’ll see what happens once we get on tour!
Testament / Exodus / Shattered Sun North American tour dates:
04/01/15 – Regency Center Grand Ballroom – San Francisco, CA
04/02/15 – House Of Blues – Hollywood, CA
04/03/15 – Livewire – Scottsdale, AZ
04/04/15 – Sunshine Theater – Albuquerque, NM
04/06/15 – Aztec Theater – San Antonio, TX
04/07/15 – House Of Blues – Houston, TX
04/08/15 – House Of Blues – Dallas, TX
04/10/15 – Pop’s – Sauget, IL
04/11/15 – Mojoes – Joliet, IL
04/12/15 – Harpo’s – Detroit, MI
04/13/15 – The Intersection – Grand Rapids, MI
04/15/15 – Phoenix Concert Theatre – Toronto, ON – CANADA
04/16/15 – Rapids Theatre – Niagara Falls, NY
04/17/15 – Starland Ballroom – Sayreville, NJ
04/18/15 – The Palladium – Worcester, MA, New England Metal & Hardcore Festival
04/19/15 – The Paramount – Huntington, NY
04/21/15 – Mercury Ballroom – Louisville, KY
04/22/15 – Cannery Ballroom – Nashville, TN
04/23/15 – Masquerade – Atlanta, GA
04/24/15 – The International – Knoxville, TN
04/25/15 – Metropolitan Park – Jacksonville, FL, Welcome To Rockville Festival (Festival Date, NO SHATTERED SUN)
04/26/15 – Culture Room – Ft. Lauderdale, FL
04/28/15 – The Fillmore – Silver Spring, MD
04/29/15 – The Chance – Poughkeepsie, NY
04/30/15 – The Trocadero – Philadelphia, PA
05/01/15 – Farm Bureau Live – Virginia Beach, VA, Lunatic Luau 15 (Festival Date, NO SHATTERED SUN)
05/02/15 – Bogarts – Cincinnati, OH
05/03/15 – Charlotte Motor Speedway – Concord, NC, Carolina Rebellion 2015 (Festival Date, NO SHATTERED SUN)