In an interview with Ghost Cult, Testament vocalist Chuck Billy revealed the band are planning to knock out a record in what seems like a pretty short amount of time.
"We start[ed] January 1st. We're gonna take the first three or four months off to write to start off the year, and then get the album out by summer. We're on a pretty good wave right now, so let's not slow down. So let's put together a new record and put ten new songs out there. Let's keep it going! When everybody gets off the road, everybody does there own thing, and does what they enjoy too. Then we all come back together to do Testament stuff, it makes it all that much more special. We're, like, 'Alright, we're all back together!' I'm really happy to have Gene around too."
Now let's break down why this is going to be the heaviest Testament record ever.
First of all, Billy and the band want to bust out some stuff from 1997's Demonic (see below), which really should be titled Testament: Holy Shit This Is Heavy. In fact, someone ought to start a petition titled "Chuck Billy Needs To Growl More," because I would sign it and then make up a bunch of fake signatures and sign it again and again. Then there's Gene Hoglan on drums, and even though he was on 2012's Dark Roots of Earth, I feel like Hoglan might start pushing them in a constantly heavier direction. Oh, speaking of members that'll bring up the super heavies, former Death and Charred Walls of the Damned bassist Steve DiGiorgio is back in the group for the first time since 2004. So there's the rhythm section, the want to play heavier music and of course there's footage of Billy at the Metal Masters performance last night, Jan. 22, jamming on some super heavy jams such as Slayer's "Mandatory Suicide.". Need I say more?
Here's Billy talking about doing more Demonic live, since I brought it up.
"Well, that is what's next. And Gene [Hoglan; drums], he's, like, 'We should play some Demonic!' But we just haven't. I imagine in the near future, next year when we have a new record, that is gonna be one of those records, we'll say, we haven't played anything live from in a while. I'd love to say, 'Let's pick out 'John Doe' or something like that.' Sometimes it's hard when you are not headlining and don't get as much time. Especially for this Lamb of God tour, we have a forty-minute set time, so we can't really talk. How do we pick out six songs out of a hundred? We need to just hit it hard, and go."
I was stoked for Dark Roots of Earth and I'm even more stoked for this.
