Testament
TM - Hi, this is Amelia and Elizabeth from Twinmusix and we are here with Chuck Billy from Testament, thank you for having this interview with us today we appreciate it.
CB - Thanks for having me.
TM - What can fans expect from your Australian tour?
CB - 2012 was the last time we were in Australia and we have wrote a lot of music since then. We will probably push a lot of the newest stuff which is awesome to play live and we will have a brand new record out by then. Australia will probably be the first live experience of some of the new material so that will be different and exciting for us.
TM - We are excited to hear the new songs first. Can you tell us more about the setlist?
CB - I'm not sure how much time we have to play but that's always the difficult part picking out this songs. The last 6 months we have been doing the Legacy and The New Order album so we have been going back and playing the older albums. We will probably lean towards playing more of the current records so two to three songs of the last four or five records.
TM - You Remastered "The Legacy and The New Order", can you tell your fans more about this?
CB - We decided to Remaster "The Legacy and The New Order". We retained the rights back to "The Legacy and The New Order" and we got the rights back to our first six Records On The Atlantic deal we had, so we went into remastered those records. We originally made them for vinyl, not CD and the process was different. They sound over compressed for me and I have always wanted to make them sound bigger and crank them up on the stereo. It is good that we got to go back and remastered "The Legacy and The New Order" which we released. We just retained the writes back for "Practice What You Preach" in August and we will get "Souls of Black" back next October so we will be putting those out through Nuclear Blast. It is just good to hear the old technology stepping into today's sound and technology.
TM - It is awesome you got your rights back, we cannot wait to hear the re-recordings. Back to your new album what can fans expect?
CB - I think in typical Testament fashion, there will be a variety of our styles, one song will not sound like the other ones. I will say Eric and Chris our new drummer worked the longest in jamming and creating the music. Our Drummer Chris is a younger guy, he was 24 when he joined the band and he is 26 now so he grew up with a different generation and style of music and he is a very talented drummer. He graduated from the Berkeley School of music so when he came to the band with his style of music it influenced our sound. Eric always comes up with something new and that's what they did for this new record. I'm pretty excited about it and the songs have a different feeling it's fast and heavy and it does not feel like a 38 year old band.
TM - What was your writing and recording process for your new album?
CB - The same as it has been in the past with technology and passing stuff around. Eric and Chris were the root of the album, they just get in the room and jam and record it. They break it down and change things around and then add me on vocals. Then the drummer feels what is good for him. I would say for the last four albums we have had the same process and have gone to the same studio and had the same Engineers so it feels familiar but the songs have their own life.
TM - If you could have any band play one of your songs what band would it be, what song would it be and would it be in your style or their style?
CB - Metallica playing any song honestly. If I had to pick a song, I would probably push to something more current than the old stuff so I'd probably say Native Blood.
TM - Who was the first band or Artist you saw live and can you tell us a story?
CB - Probably KISS in 1974 and I remember it was me and my cousins and some people who lived down the street from my cousins. I was only twelve years-old and that was back when you could drop off a twelve, thirteen or fourteen year old kids at a concert in San Francisco and it was my first time experiencing marijuana in a big auditorium and seeing a band like KISS. I was like holy smokes and it opened my eyes because I grew up like an athlete. When I saw that performance it pushed me to think, I would love to be like Gene Simmons and that was the first show that made a statement of course. There was county fair stuff but that doesn't count, I wanted to be like Kiss.
TM - Did they inspire you to play live?
CB - Yeah, I always wanted to be like Gene Simmons sticking your tongue out and being over the top. When he spit his blood it was so powerful and so demanding in controlling it spoke to me.
TM - You released a new Coffee can you tell us more about that?
CB - It is a Brazen darker roast blend and we worked with a company called Coffee Concepts. It is out of Florida and they have done a bunch of coffees four different metal bands from Cannibal Corpse to Ministry and ice nine kills and a handful of bands. We were approached to do a Testament coffee and we already had one out but we decided to change companies and their artworks were cool. They created cool coffee bags and tins and they had great artists and they also wanted the band to stand behind their coffee. They sent me fifteen bags of beans that I would blend up and sample till we found the right one and we had to decide between the whole band what we liked. We all liked the strong and flavorful one, some of the guys drink black and I put creamer in it so we all had to be happy with what we got. I don't drink coffee black but I would have to sample it that way when I was testing it until we found something I loved. In the end we found one that is flavorful and we backed this one up and we had two beans that we sent out on the American tour just to have fans let us know which one they enjoyed more. The darker roast was our choice and some fans confirmed that with us.
TM - Your limited edition tin was cool as well.
CB - That was very cool and we took those out on the American tour. They only made about 800 tins I think, we also have the bags and they have started the pre-sale now and they are very cool.
TM - You also have a beer as well.
CB - We have done that a few times, there are microbreweries popping up around the country and the load of them are owned by metalheads. They know we have a tour coming up so when we came to town the breweries are like hey let's make a beer. We found a brewery called Modist in Minneapolis and they had the access to ship beer around the country and the beer went so quick that we are trying to plan something else. It is mostly a limited edition and we don't just continue selling it. We will put a batch out sell it and come up with something different but that one came out nice and it was good.
TM - Is there anything else you want to say to your fans?
CB - It is good to get back there after such a long time. We have a lot of new music to play it is going to be pretty awesome. We have five shows in Australia so it should be a long show. We will try and play as much music as we can and Australia should be the first to get a taste of our new record when it comes out. I think that is our first stop for our new material.
TM - That's awesome we are excited to hear your new music.