Just as the elements of this planet thrive within all living creatures, each musician in Testament represents a necessary component of this latest musical endeavour in “Titans Of Creation” which was unleashed to the world on April 3rd via Nuclear Blast. Still filled with a massive and unstoppable energy since their last release, Testament has taken their style to the next level and present an album that is loyal to the roots of traditional thrash metal while still bringing alluring, brilliant, and progressive ingredients to the table. After previously speaking to frontman Chuck Billy before the cancellation of Download Festival in Australia earlier in the year, we spoke to guitarist Eric Peterson about the new songs as well as touch on the craziness of the current world that personally affected members of Testament.
Andrew: I know it’s crazy times at the moment and I know you guys have been affected by some of all this so how is everyone over at your end?
Eric: Everybody is doing good! You hear about it, we’re on tour and we’re hearing about this virus, we were kind of missing it but hearing about all this stuff. The first time it affected us was we were in Switzerland and we were about to make our way through to Italy and right the day before they were all closing their borders or the Government closed everything down and I was like, ‘Wow that’s crazy’. So we headed to Spain and then in Paris we heard that Spain was going to close down like, ‘Woah!’ So it was kind of like one of those weird dreams where you are running and looking behind you and the earth is falling, just crumbling down to nothing, you’re just barely making it. That was our tour, it just seemed surreal with all this shit going down and then getting home, Chuck and his wife were like, ‘We really don’t feel good’ and I think within a couple of days Steve Di Giorgio our bass player and Chuck were just out for the count.
So just getting home and finding out from my guitar tech he just said he was getting the symptoms and was supposed to find out the next day whether he had it or not and I would text him and say, ‘Did you get your results?’ He goes, ‘No they said another week now’, and I ask how he felt and he goes, ‘Like shit’. But when he finally found out that he was positive, I kinda reckoned that everybody else that was feeling like that was going to be positive as well. But it’s been over a month now and some of the crew members didn’t get it, Alex, Gene and myself didn’t catch it although Gene said that he caught it in November when we went to Nepal and he had a layover in China for 3 hours I guess by himself and he said he came back and he was just sick as a dog for a couple of weeks. He never got tested though, it’s just one of his theories. But yeah I mean when you see it everywhere it’s like, ‘Eh it’s nothing’ but when you know people that really got it and you ask them how they felt…One of Chuck’s stories that stuck in my head was, ‘Our dogs got sick four feet away from us and we didn’t even clean up the mess for a couple of days because we just had no energy’.
Andrew: Yeah it’s quite unbelievable and quite sad with everything that’s going on. It’s also affected the music industry and the bands with all their touring and that kind of stuff and I know you guys were supposed to be hitting the road with The Black Dahlia Murder which has obviously been postponed or cancelled. So it’s obviously hit you guys pretty hard in that respect as well.
Eric: Yeah we had bought tickets to do the Download in Australia for last month and when all that hit before Chuck got sick when we were in Europe, we were like, ‘You know what? We’re going to pull out, this shit is going to hit the fan’. So we cancelled our tickets and we paid a lot of money for penalties and then we told our agent and he was like, ‘Oh you shouldn’t have done that’, and then the promoter was like, ‘No don’t do that’. We didn’t want to mess things up with Live Nation so we got tickets again and then a week later they announce, We’re not doing it’ [laughs]. Like ‘Aaah!’ Our first assumption was right but then the American tour I think we would be on our third or fourth show tonight.
Andrew: Yeah we were pretty excited to see you in Australia with the Download Festival and obviously that’s not happening but we hope to see you down our way when all this blows over. But I guess on a more positive note the new album that came out “Titans Of Creation” is fantastic, I absolutely love this album! Out of all the things that’s happening at the moment this is a shining light through all this, at least from your perspective anyway.
Eric: Yeah it’s a great record to engulf and inhale it and be home and listen to it. It’s sad that we can’t tour on it but it’s a great record to dive into when you have some down time, a lot going on.
Andrew: I spoke to Chuck a couple of months ago, we were talking about the album before it came out and he was really digging it as well and said it’s some of the best stuff you guys have come up with and I kind of agree with some of the stuff that you’ve done on here especially on the track “Night Of The Witch” which I know you had a bit of a hand on that one right?
Eric: Yeah just some vocals on that part. I don’t know if it’s the chorus or the pre-chorus, some people call it the chorus but I don’t know! It worked out really well, it’s cool to have the trade off with Chuck and myself because it worked really well. I think before people knew it was me, some people were like, ‘Man Chuck sounds super wicked on that part!’ And I’m like, ‘Ah I did that!’ But who would of guessed that one of the other band members would have a lead vocal part, I would of never have imagined. I mean I do a lot of backup stuff with that same voice but to have by myself was cool.
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Andrew: How did you approach that part? Did you have that in mind for quite a while or was it you and Chuck just discussing it? How did work out?
Eric: I think we had recorded a couple of songs and he got them killer and he says, ‘Ok I’m going to go back down and go work with Del again’. He works with this guy named Del James that has been working with us since The Ritual for lyrics and I’m like, ‘Ok’. But this one right here, I think I was calling it The Witch or Witch Spell or something like that and this one is going to be about Witches and he was like, ‘Alright we’ll see what happens’. So he called me up and was all, ‘Well your dream came true, it’s about witches. We’re calling it “By The Light Of The Moon”, and I’m like, ‘Eh By The Light Of The Moon”? That sounds kind of corny’. So when he came up and he sang it, we figured out we’re going to change the title but when it got to that part [sings chorus melody] I’m like, ‘You’re supposed to sing there’ and he’s all, ‘I don’t like that part, I don’t hear anything there at all. I don’t get it’. And I was like, ‘What? You can sing anything over that’. He goes, ‘ Well show me’. So I went into the booth and they played it and I just spewed it out and then him and Juan [Urteaga, co-proucer] were talking through the glass and I’m like, ‘Hey what’s up!’ Then Juan pressed the button and goes, ‘Ok you’re doing it’ [laughs]. I was like, ‘Ok!’ I think Chuck tried to sing some death vocals on top of me and we were just like, ‘You know what, let’s just leave it like that. That way you can have a little break’. That was really cool, it was a total accident.
Andrew: It sounds good and it’s a great idea to have. I guess that’s you guys experimenting with different ideas and really just taking the band forward and evolving in some stuff because you guys have been doing this for a long time now and I guess after a while you want to try new and different things here and there.
Eric: Yeah for sure, that’s the best way to evolve is to add little elements. I mean not do it every song, we did it to one more song, I think it was the last song we wrote and the music already has kind of a black metal sound to it anyway. It was the last song that we wrote in the studio, after Gene was done recording everything we were sitting there listening to everything and Gene looked at me and goes, ‘We need one more song that’s just faster’, and I was like, ‘I got a riff in my head right now, let’s go jam’. He goes, ‘Ok cool let’s go do it’ and I think within about 15 minutes we had a song and it was like, ‘Woah!’ Because I had this melody in my head [sings melody] and then we just turned that riff into everything, we played it fast, played it slow. We were just in that mood so it was like perfect timing but when it came to that black metal part, you know the chorus just the way they sound, Chuck just looked at me and goes, ‘You’re going to sing on that part’ [laughs].
Andrew: Well it worked out well and the whole album, even a song like “False Prophet” for example which is probably my favorite song at the moment after about a thousand listens, that’s really stuck in my mind I think.
Eric: I think that was the second song that we put together and that one has got the kind of meat and potatoes of Testament, I don’t know, it reminds me of our older stuff with just the chord progression.
Andrew: Yeah I definitely think you have a nice blend on the last few albums of the old and the new kind of stuff. I felt this one kind of had a lot of throwback to the old school Testament stuff, not just musically but even like the album cover and everything. It just seemed there was a bit of the old sneaking in a bit there.
Eric: Yeah this one especially the cover was all Eliran’s [Kantor] idea because there was no lyrics, there was just a bunch of music and a lot of times you go off a storyboard of the lyrics. “Practice What You Preach” was kind of like that too, we had no music and we had this artwork that somebody brought to us and we were just looking at it like, ‘Wow’. Eliran was the same thing with this one and we were like eventually we will have a song and there will be a title that will fit the cover. The only one that came close to fitting was “Children Of The Next Level” but we were just like, to a lot of younger people the “next level” is kind of a thing like, dude that’s so next level or next level hamburger, next level this, next level that and I’m like, ‘Well it means something positive, you can’t really make fun of it’. But it was just weird like, no not Children Of The Next Level, everything is “of the”. But you can’t get away in metal, you have to use “The” somewhere [laughs].
So after the record was written none of the titles fit so we were just, ‘name that cover, what is it saying’ and we went through all these different quotes and it started getting ridiculous, it was either way too science fiction or way too corny or it didn’t fit at all. I remember one night I think I came up with the title but what I was doing was I was looking at all the titles of what we have compiled and it was almost like a code, out of the ten titles that we had come up with from everybody I see “Titans Of” and “Creation” somewhere. It was like Creation of Within The Void Of The World or something or Titans In Hell, so that stuck out. Titans Of Creation. So right away I texted that to everybody and they’re like, Yeah let’s keep trying but that’s cool. Because at that point everything you pitch was like, ‘Yeah’, but it was the ones that stuck.
Andrew: Well it’s worked out pretty well for you guys, it’s a fantastic album so congratulations on that. So as said before we hope you guys will come back our way to Australia again, maybe even as a headlining tour or something but we would love to see you back here after all this crazy stuff has blown over.
Eric: For sure, thank you.
Get Titans Of Creation on iTunes here | Physical copies HERE.
