TESTAMENT

Having survived deadly disease, industry indifference, and near-terminal lineup changes, the Bay Area thrash OGs return with the punishing Formation of Damnation and a new lease on life

By Jon Wiederhorn

There aren’t too many thrash-metal musicians in Antioch, California, an Oakland suburb marked by wavy hills and modern stucco houses. The locale is too far from major rock venues, and the real estate value is steep for anyone without a six-figure income. Yet inside one of the region’s stately properties, Testament frontman Chuck Billy is sitting at his living room table with guitarist Eric Peterson, drinking Belgian beer and listening to the final mix of the band’s new studio album, The Formation of Damnation. As instrumental lead track “For the Glory Of” segues into raging first single “More than Meets the Eye,” a storm of chunky guitar riffs, booming bass notes, and colossal drum volleys trigger a round of tight-lipped, headbobbing. Then, when a scorching 50-second solo builds, dips, and spirals to the sky, Peterson and Billy clink bottles. The sound of glass-on-glass says it all: Testament are back.

This isn’t the fragmented band that over the past seven years managed to put out only an album of re-recorded old songs and a single live CD. These are the fierce, confident musicians who conquered San Francisco’s thriving thrash-metal scene in the late ’80s with rib-bruising albums that rivaled those of the Big Four (Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth, Anthrax) before being dethroned by the grunge movement and losing three of their founding members.

Today, two of those players—lead guitarist Alex Skolnick and bassist Greg Christian—are back, which explains in part why The Formation of Damnation burns with a level of intensity Testament haven’t displayed since their third and most popular record, 1989’s Practice What You Preach. Peterson has always written crushing songs and he’s a killer rhythm guitarist, but like Metallica’s James Hetfield, he needs a lead axman, and Skolnick’s solo chops and melodic focus make him a better fit for Testament than anyone else they have worked with.

“It’s great to have Alex with us again,” agrees Billy. “When we wrote the last two records, we didn’t build songs with spaces for leads, but this time, we were like, ‘OK, this is where Alex is going to do his thing.’ Having that back again brings out a lot the best elements we’ve had in this band over the years.”
“Whatever I contributed to the band in the early days was just naturally going to be brought back when I rejoined,” adds the soft-spoken Skolnick later when Revolver meets him at a coffee shop in the artsy Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, where he owns a condo. “But it’s more developed now, because I’m a better musician.”

The other reason The Formation of Damnation sounds so triumphant and life-affirming is because seven years ago Chuck Billy literally almost lost his own life, to cancer. “When you get through something like that, it just changes you, man,” the singer says with a shrug.

Accommodating, amiable, and drug-free, Billy’s hardly the opinionated hothead he was for 10 years spent popping speed and chain-smoking weed. He’s still a hulking figure, but the sneer on his publicity photos is deceptive. In person, he’s a gentle giant with a warm smile and a warm handshake.

“I’m not saying I needed to get cancer, but I definitely needed something to turn my life around, because I was a stubborn guy and thought I was right about everything and didn’t want to listen to anybody,” Billy says, heading to the fridge for another round of brews. “Now I’m much nicer and more easygoing.”

It’s a good thing Testament’s frontman felt so Zen-like over the past year, because there was plenty to stress about during the making of Damnation. The first major battle was finding a drummer. Original member Louie Clemente had rejoined the band for its 2005 reunion tour, but he bowed out partway through, in part because of a hand injury and partly to focus on his antiques business. Nick Barker (formerly of Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir) took his place and helped with writing duties. But in July 2006, after an appearance at the Waldrock Open Air festival in Burgum, Holland, Barker was denied re-entry into the U.S. because his visa was invalid. So Testament called ex-Slayer and Exodus drummer Paul Bostaph. At first, the plan was to finish writing with Bostaph, then have Barker return when his immigration problems were cleared up.

“We really like Nick, but once we got a couple songs down with Paul, we were like, Wait, he’s putting all this effort into this and loves it,” Peterson says. “We couldn’t take that away from him.”

There were other factors that delayed the completion of The Formation of Damnation. Skolnick had other musical commitments and could only work on the record at select times, and since Peterson and Billy hadn’t written together since 1999’s The Gathering, they found themselves confronted by self-doubt.

“We just kept thinking, it’s great to be back with this lineup, but, man, if we don’t outplay our last record, it could be really damaging, because expectations are so high,” Billy explains.

“Yeah, but I always knew that once we finished the record it was going to be killer,” adds Peterson. “We’re so judgmental on our stuff, there was no question we would deliver. It was just a question of when.”

As it turns out, Testament’s timing might be perfect. Over the past couple of years, rock fans have begun to abandon metalcore and emo and turn back to classic thrash. Slayer have won two Grammys in a row, young bands including Trivium, Black Tide, and Warbringer are turning heads, and old-schoolers like Exodus and Death Angel have released their best albums in years. With The Formation of Damnation, Testament have not only proven their validity and vitality, they’ve written an album that’s strong enough to potentially return them to the metal mainstream.

Ironically, it was just this impulse—to move into the mainstream—that tore Testament apart in the first place. Their 1987 debut, The Legacy, was violent and explosive yet tempered with tasteful guitar parts and vocals as raggedly catchy as those of Joey Belladonna–era Anthrax; its follow-up, 1988’s The New Order, was equally aggressive, but with ‘89’s Practice What You Preach, Testament began giving in to persistent suggestions by Skolnick and their label, Megaforce/Atlantic, that they try for a more commercial sound. The album was a big success and the band employed the same formula for their follow-up, 1990’s Souls of Black, but the musical compromise opened a creative rift between Skolnick and Peterson that turned into a canyon during the making of 1992’s The Ritual.

“I had a lot of heavy stuff written, and Alex went and toned it down,” gripes Peterson. “There was a lot of unhappiness because of that.”

Even though he was getting his way musically, Skolnick was probably the unhappiest member of the band. Not only was he becoming more interested in jazz than metal, he was getting the cold shoulder from his bandmates most of the time. “If I were to walk into soundcheck or on the tour bus, I wouldn’t feel like anybody was happy to see me,” he recalls, fiddling with a small metal skull dangling from a chain around his neck. “All those guys wanted to do was smoke pot and play videogames all day long. I don’t have any moral objections to pot, I just don’t do it, and I felt like there was so much more to explore in life.”

In the middle of the tour for The Ritual, Skolnick announced he was leaving Testament after they got off the road. “I was sad that we were losing him and scared, but I was kind of happy musically because I thought, Yeah, we can be heavy again now,” Peterson says.

Not long after Skolnick quit, Clemente, frustrated by the band’s lack of success, bailed as well. Without missing a beat, Testament hired ex-Death guitarist James Murphy and ex–White Zombie drummer John Tempesta, but the instability continued and after 1994’s brutal but overlooked Low, Atlantic dropped the band. The news was too hard on Christian, who also quit. Over the next seven years, Testament became a revolving door of star players, including drummer Gene Hoglan (Death, Strapping Young Lad), guitarist Glen Alvelais (Forbidden), and bassist Steve DiGiorgio (Death, Sadus). Despite the constant flux, Testament released two more studio albums, the 1997 death-metal disc Demonic and the more conventional thrash offering, The Gathering, but neither sold well.

It took more than a tragedy to bring the original members of Testament back; it took two. The first was late Death frontman Chuck Schuldiner’s battle with a brain tumor and need for financial help. The second was Billy’s cancer. Devastated by both, local promoter Walter Morgan put together the benefit concert Thrash of the Titans, which took place in August 2001 and featured Testament, a reunited Death Angel, and others. Skolnick flew in for the gig and joined his ex-bandmates onstage for the first time in nine years. The show revitalized most of the group, but at the time Billy was focusing all his strength on beating his illness.

Billy’s story of survival is nothing short of incredible. It started in 2001 when a real estate agent convinced him to sell his house in San Leandro. So, the family moved to Antioch and found a new family doctor. Since Billy hadn’t had a physical in 20 years, he scheduled an exam. The doctor found a mass around his chest and a CAT scan revealed a cancerous growth called a germ cell seminoma that, over time, had grown to the size of a squash.

“At first, the news kind of went in one ear and out the other,” recalls Billy. “My wife said, ‘What’d the doctor say?’ and I went, ‘Oh, I’ve got cancer.’ And that’s when it hit me. I sat on that couch and she and I cried for that whole day. I went to bed feeling sorry for myself, then woke up in the morning pissed off and I said, ‘I’m gonna beat this fucking thing.’ That’s when I got mentally ready to go.”

The day after he was diagnosed, Billy began 12 weeks of chemotherapy. Just days later, he received a surprise visit from an acquaintance, a Native American medicine man named Charley. While Billy is a descendent of the Pomo Indian tribe, he had no experience with Indian medicine, but he felt an immediate connection with the shaman, who conducted a healing ceremony. “I lay down in the middle of the floor and he brought in a flute and an eagle’s feather and started circling me, chanting and playing the flute,” Billy explains. “Suddenly, I was totally on this journey flying through the air. I heard wolves howling and wind. Then he swooped the Eagle’s feather across my body and I felt something move from my chest to my stomach.”

Before leaving, Charley told Billy the wind would be his spirit guide on his road to recovery. A week later, the singer woke up on to a mysterious clanking, and when he looked out the window he saw the wind had formed a tiny tornado in his backyard and had picked up a bunch of empty beer cans that had been lying around and were now swirling in the midst of this miniature twister. Suddenly, Billy had the urgent need to use the toilet.

“I sat down, and right when I let something out of my body, the wind stopped and the beer cans hit the ground,” he says. “I felt an overwhelming sensation that I was better. Later that week, blood tests determined that the tumor was no longer cancerous.”

Encouraged by his first experience with Native American medicine, Billy made an appointment with a man named Lupon, who claims to be a direct descendent of Geronimo and lives with wild wolves. Before Billy arrived, he was told that if the wolves growled or snapped as he approached the house, he should leave, but if they accepted him, he could enter. “I got through, and Lupon sat down with me and taught me how to focus my energy on the sick part of my body by putting an imaginary circle around it and envisioning a powerful healing color washing over the circle and shrinking the tumor,” Billy recalls.

Testament’s frontman diligently practiced what he had learned, and by the time he saw his doctor, whether through Native American rituals or chemotherapy, the tumor had shrunk to the size of an orange and become operable. So, during an eight-hour operation, doctors cracked open Billy’s chest and removed the growth. They planned to open him up again weeks later to replace one of Billy’s damaged heart valves with one from a pig, a procedure Billy dreaded. Inexplicably, when he returned to the doctor for further tests, his own valve was working again. “It’s not something I can explain, but I’ve learned from all of this that a lot of things in life can’t be explained. They just have to be accepted.”

But even once Billy was finally cancer-free, he was slow to return to the metal scene. “At that point, I couldn’t have cared less if I ever toured again or made music,” he says. “I wanted more to be with my friends and my family and just enjoy what I used to take for granted. Then one day I put on The Ritual just for the hell of it, and when I did, it was all brand new again, and that got me really excited.”

Billy booked Testament a reunion show at the Dynamo Open Air Festival in Nijmegen, Holland, for May 2005. When word got out, the band was invited to play other festivals as well, and in no time Testament had 10 dates booked. “It just blossomed into 30 shows and then 50, and the next thing we knew, Turkey and Dubai are calling for us to play,” Billy says. “All of that buzz and hype evolved into us looking at each other and saying, ‘Hey, what do you think about doing another record?’”

Now that they’ve made that record, there’s just one problem: As cohesive as they sound, Testament aren’t ready to pack up their suitcases and hit the road together for months on end. It’s largely a financial decision. Billy’s pretty well off today—as evidenced by his house, his 28-foot boat, his monster truck, and his silver Mercedes—but his wealth didn’t come from Testament, which hasn’t seen a royalty check in 10 years. And no, he wasn’t running a drug ring, either. Billy earned his money the honest way, at his day job managing an Oakland truck company owned by the parents of Laaz Rockit bassist and Billy’s longtime friend Willy Lange. Billy started working as a mechanic there 10 years ago and soon brought the mom-and-pop company into the digital age. “They didn’t have anything on computers, so I got them all updated, and then through the Internet I landed them a $50-million-dollar-a-year contract,” Billy recalls. “They went out and bought a new fleet of trucks, hired another 300 drivers, and now they’re the No. 1 mail contractor in the United States.”

Since Billy’s boss is also a rocker, he’s free to take a couple of weeks off here and there for shows; however the company needs him in the office most of the year. Similarly, Skolnick’s not interested in an extended tour run. His main passion is his jazz band, the Alex Skolnick Trio, and he earns a comfortable living as a guitarist for Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the immensely successful Christmas rock ensemble.

Ironically, Testament’s main songwriter and founder, Peterson, is hardly wealthy, and would surely benefit financially were Testament to tour more. But he has learned to accept the band’s limitations. “I live within my means, so I scrape by,” he says with little enthusiasm. “I don’t have a lot of stuff and I’m OK with that. It’s more important for me that everyone in Testament feels excited by what we’re doing. I don’t want anyone to say, ‘Fuck this, I’m out again.’”

For now, Testament are taking it slow, planning 60 or so shows over the next year and cherishing the opportunity to once again write and play music they love. If their unwillingness to undertake a serious tour hurts their chances of further success, so be it. At least for Billy, living in the moment has become far preferable to chasing the rock-and-roll dream.

“Man, I treasure every second now,” he explains. “My friends and my family are just as important as this band, and I want to divide my time between all of them.

“But hey, if next thing you know, we’ve got our first gold record, fuck, we’ll go on a major tour,” Billy continues. “But you know, if we never got to tour again and we just made music in our studio and played it in our car and went, ‘Dude, killer song!’ and played local shows, fuck, that would be cool enough for me.”