Metal Anarchy

During a recent interview with Overdrive.ie, Testament’s Chuck Billy offered an update on the the band’s new album. According to him, the group are planning to mix the effort in December or January.

Billy said the following:

“Eric [Peterson] and Chris [Dovas] have been working together since around November. And we had a few shows thrown in there early in the year. We got into the studio, I believe, maybe end of April, beginning of May, we started recording ’em, about 11 tracks ready to go. All the music was done and [we] started the recording process. I still needed to go write some lyrics. We really wanted to get the record done before we came over to Europe [in early July]. I have seven tracks finished. Eric has a bunch of guitar tracks. The drums are finished. The only thing left is the bass and Alex [Skolnick], lead-guitar stuff. Between this tour, when we get home in two weeks, we’ll go back in the studio and finish up, continue on, and then we start the American leg with KREATOR and POSSESSED. And then between that break, we’ll try to get everything finished up. Then we go back to Europe, again with KREATOR and ANTHRAX. We plan to, I think, start mixing in December, January. That’s the goal.”

He also added the following about the musical direction:

“We always try to outdo ourselves or make a better record or write better songs. It’s always a challenge for ourselves, and I think this time we really took a long time to create the record. We kind of got everybody in the same room to really go through the songs and kind of put their two cents in to the arrangements. I think by having Chris — he’s a younger drummer, a really great drummer — but I think he brought you know a new fire to Eric in the writing process. And I believe because we’re going on 37 years of making records, it’s kind of full circle right now. We’re kind of inspired by new generation, I guess, of music and metal. And Chris is a big part of that. He’s a big fan of that. So I think he inspired Eric just to write some really aggressive, fast, creative riffs. And it really inspired me to really push myself to try to do a little more screaming, death vocals, melodic stuff. We even went as far as writing — I don’t wanna say ‘ballad’, but it’s something really catchy that’s really slow that’s something we haven’t done in over 30 years. So I think just the overall songs and the confidence in the writing this time really is gonna stand out on this record.”

[via Blabbermouth]