“This process was definitely more enjoyable than the Brotherhood process, I think it shows in the songs,” says Testament vocalist Chuck Billy, speaking exclusively to BraveWords scribe Aaron Small as he compares his band’s new album, Titans Of Creation, to their previous release, 2016’s Brotherhood Of The Snake.

“We just put our backs to the wall and that really forced it out of us, which I think made us get a little more creative,” continues Chuck. “We wrote the songs a lot quicker and pushed ourselves out of the comfort zone when it came time to write. Usually I would challenge Eric (Peterson, guitarist) on a lot of his riffs and try to arrange them to make them more suited for me. This time around I really didn’t do that. I wanted the process to be quicker than Brotherhood, cause that was like a two year process to write. We didn’t have that time, just give me what you got. I’m gonna soak it up and do my best. It really challenged me, when I didn’t challenge him on his riffs. I just rolled with it and sang some vocals that maybe weren’t in my range, but I made it work and felt my way through it.”

“Things like that we did by just rolling the tape. There’s at least five or six songs where we just let the tape roll and I’d mumble out the parts. Stop the tape, oh that’s good there, let’s hear that. That was the first gut instinct of where we were going vocally on it, and we stuck with that first instinct. I think it makes it stand out because we didn’t second-guess or chase our tail. It felt like the right thing to do. Now, listening back, there’s some unique stuff and it makes the songs have a little more uniqueness to them.”

There’s certainly some musical experimentation amongst the expected thrash riffs on Titans Of Creation. “It’s definitely different. It’s got different flavours. When we wrote it, ‘Children Of The Next Level’ was the first song, and that could have been right off Brotherhood Of The Snake. The topic was a futuristic, aliens creating mankind kind of vibe. So it really could have took that direction, but once I started getting the songs from Eric, they all took on their own life and feeling, that weren’t to me typical metal selections of riffs or notes to use, which made it a little more challenging for me, which was good I guess. A lot of the songs felt different, like ‘Ishtar’s Gate’ and ‘Code Of Hammurabi’. I knew right then; it’s going to change. Each song’s going to stand out on its own and have its own story.

Speaking of “Ishtar’s Gate” and “Code Of Hammurabi”, both songs center around ancient Babylon. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to surmise that Chuck has a secret love of history, but that isn’t the case. “No, too much TV,” admits the singer. “That’s why on Brotherhood I was really fascinated by aliens possibly creating mankind and what it is here today. It just kind of opened my mind… I was kind of in that mindset from that record going into this one, somewhat. But those ones, it was the feeling. They really had this Eastern feeling. Me and Eric went to Israel and went to Jerusalem. I know he was inspired by Ishtar’s Gate when we went to see it in Germany at the museum; that probably played a part of it. When he wrote that song, we didn’t have the lyrics. He just kind of referenced that riff. When it came time to write, let’s continue on about the Gates of Ishtar.”

From one museum to another, a partial copy – standing seven and a half feet tall – of the Code Of Hammurabi is currently on display in the Louvre in Paris, France. “I didn’t get to see that. That was inspired by Alex (Peterson, guitarist), he came up with that story to write about. It’s just basically going back to the first simple law – eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth; you get caught stealing, lose a hand.”

“Curse Of Osiris” redirects the compass to ancient Egypt. A song about the God of fertility, agriculture, the afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation – whose brother, Set, murdered and dismembered him. “Yeah, cut him into pieces. And the son’s out to avenge his father’s death. That was one of the fastest songs on the record, it was easy to compose. It’s really fast, so there’s not much room to be really melodic; it’s rapid-fire. The Osiris thing, we came up with that line, felt good about it and just started building it from that.”

Religion rears its head on “False Prophet”, a song inspired by Jeffrey Don Lundgren, an American self-proclaimed prophet and mass murderer, who in 1989, killed five people in Kirtland, Ohio. “That’s about the Kirtland Massacre,” confirms Chuck. “They bound and gagged all their prisoners and brought them out into a barn and shot them execution style into shallow graves out there. He thought he was the next prophet, a God. That was one me and Zet (Steve Souza) from Exodus wrote.”

“WW III” is not a concept anybody wants to envision, but it certainly provides ample lyrical fodder. “Yeah, that was another one we kind of mumbled through. ‘Nuclear warheads’ was something I found while I was mumbling it and right away thought World War III and nuclear holocaust. It’s just set as a reminder, look at the Korean missile testing. The possibility of having two powers, our President (Donald Trump) and anybody else out there that could be crazy enough to start something like that. It makes you think, this is probably the closest in my lifetime that there’s a possibility. It’s so scary that there’s that much power, that much control, that something can escalate to that very quickly.”

“City Of Angels” - a song about The Night Stalker, real name Richard Ramirez, who killed at least 14 people before being captured in 1985 - is by Chuck’s own admission, the “closest thing to something ballady. But I don’t think the record was set up for a ballad. From the beginning, I was fighting for that song not to make the record. It’s a long song, that to me was really simple but too repetitive, when I was first hearing it musically. I was working with my friend Del (James) who I write words with, he actually had that song already written. I mentioned that I had one more song, I don’t want it to make the record. He said, ‘Let me hear it, let me hear it.’ So, I did. Then he brought these lyrics to me and said, ‘Try these.’ And they worked, they actually fit. Timing-wise, I didn’t know how I was going to approach it vocally, until I got home. The following day was when I started tracking that song, and that’s when it kind of took on its own life; it really started coming alive, and I really started getting it at that point. And it ended up turning out to be one of my favourite songs now. Going from me fighting not to get it on there, to being a standout now.”

Another unique aspect of Titans Of Creation is Eric singing with Chuck, on both “Night Of The Witch” and “Curse Of Osiris”. He brings a bit of his Dragonlord / black metal influence to Testament, yet it’s not overbearing; it just adds another great flavour. “Yeah, ‘Night Of The Witch’, at first I wrote it to where I was taking that part Eric does, out. I wasn’t going to do the witch part. Eric wanted to keep the riff in there, so we had to create it to where he sung the witch. He wanted to give it a shot, and it worked out. It’s a different dimension we hadn’t tried before, and it worked.”

Quite often, the album title is also the name of a song, however that isn’t the case with Titans Of Creation. “We didn’t come up with the title until about maybe a week before we had to turn in all the artwork and the layout. We kept staring at if for a month, maybe even longer, trying to figure out what it was. We knew that they (the three figures) were pouring DNA from these jars and creating life. But we didn’t know what those were? Demons, aliens, we didn’t know what to reference them as? Nothing was strong. At first, it could have been Children Of The Next Level, but that didn’t really fit when we looked at it. I think Eric came up with that word in the last week – titans. Yeah, those could be titans, that sounds strong. So, we went with titans of creation at that point. It made sense looking at the record. It made sense the way the record was created, the way we approached it. It all made sense at that point.”

Titans Of Creation is Testament’s 13th studio album. It’s been one hell of a journey since the release of The Legacy, way back in 1987. “We don’t know how the songs, how the records will turn out. We know that they’re all going to have their own identity, cause that’s just the way we work. But until the final songs are mixed and I hear it as a sequenced record, that’s when I sit back, and it’s thumbs up or thumbs down. This one, I could listen to it a bunch of times. Where, for me, I’ll put my heart and soul into a record and not listen to it forever pretty much. This one was different, and I knew that. These are some unique, special songs that definitely have a different flavour.”

(Photos by Stephanie Cabral)