Testament will release their eleventh studio album, The Brotherhood Of The Snake, later this year via Nuclear Blast. Vocalist Chuck Billy spoke to The Metalist about the new record. Read an excerpt below:

The Metalist: Do you think that the fact that you went out and did various different tours and then came back, do you think that may have added a different perspective on the record?

Chuck Billy: “I believe it did because when we were just writing, pounding our heads against the wall trying to come up with the material its nice to get away from it go and take a break and just play, have fun. We got back and a lot more progress on the songs started happening, I dunno there’s just the energy of being on tour, of playing and having your chops down. Its a little easier to get some more progress on the record.”

The Metalist: Have you got themes in mind for the new record?

Chuck Billy: “Well the new record is going to be called The Brotherhood Of The Snake and its basically about a lot of the early secret societies that started taking over power, trying to control the society and spawned off into illuminati’s and stuff like that so its kind of going back to a lot of that. A lot of human control and religions, the similarities between religions and alien beings and stuff like that. I’ve been fascinated a lot by a lot of programs that show a lot of different religions and all the writings or hieroglyphics always have the same type beings with all of these religions.

“It makes you think, wow so long ago these people didn’t know people on the other side of the ocean yet they have these common sightings in the religions that they talk about and reference. It was just really interesting to me opening my eyes more to religion, I was raised a catholic but growing up and just seeing these connections makes me think about all of the religions you know? The connection between the human race and aliens, its just really fascinating to me. So we started spotting a lot of ideas for songs off of that.”

Listen to the interview below:

In live news, Testament's next show is May 28th in Baltimore, MD at Maryland Deathfest. Click here to view their complete tour schedule.