TESTAMENT frontman Chuck Billy was interview on the Heavy Metal Mayhem radio show, courtesy of BlogTalkRadio.com, on Sunday, January 3rd. Listen to the interview in the player below.

Charlie Steffens (aka Gnarly Charlie) from KNAC.com spoke with Chuck Billy recently about a number of topics. A few excerpts from the chat follow:

KNAC.com: Do you have a release date for the new album?

Billy: "Not sure. We were shooting to not do any touring this year until we got the record finished, but the Slayer tour came up, so we couldn’t pass that up. So we decided to keep writing and we’re going to make an attempt to finish writing the record out on the road this year, which is something we haven’t done in over twenty five years.

KNAC.com: It is an amazing lineup: Testament sharing the stage with MEGADETH and SLAYER, and, obviously, a much-talked-about tour these days.

Billy: "Yeah, it’s going to be fun. I mean, it’s something I think that’s definitely been a long time coming, especially hearing the fans’ response for The Clash of the Titans. They’d love to be able see that, because they just read about it and never got to catch the concert, so it will be nice to see all three of us again. The beauty of it is that we’re all here 20+ years later and putting out good music, you know?"

KNAC.com: What can you tell us about the forthcoming record?

Billy: "Well we’re doing demos trying to go this way - if it’s not broken don’t try to fix it. We’re really trying to get the mindset like, “Let’s just pretend like we’re at last year, the last time that we were writing, and take it from that point on and just pretend like we’re still writing this record.” If we can write ten more songs that should have been on The Formation, you know, right on. It can’t be that bad.

KNAC.com: What are you doing to gear up for the tour?

Billy: "We’ve been rehearsing, just getting a set down. I treat it like a boxing fight, like I’m going to have a fight in a month. I hit the gym, I’m running (laughs), and I’m doing the whole thing. I’m looking at it like I’m going into a fight. I’m mentally and physically getting prepared for it. We feel pretty good. Last night we just made a crucial decision, so you’re going to be the first exclusive to hear. We decide last night that instead of putting - because we only have a 40-minute set to pick - instead of playing a medley of songs, we decided we’re going to do the entire The Legacy record, start to finish, in its entirety for the show. We did it last year, over in Holland, and then we did a show in London. And that show we did The Legacy and The New Order back to back, just like on the records, song after song. It was awesome. It was such an awesome deal. It turned out way better than we thought. It was killer. So, we were rehearsing for this tour, and at one point we were like, 'Man, we’re not playing this and we’re not playing that. Ah, shit. We only got 40 minutes; you can only play eight songs, so it’s tough to pick eight songs. We’re leaving so many good ones out.' And we were like, 'You know what? Since we’ve already toured a year and a half with PRIEST, we did our own headline, we did so much stuff out there, why don’t we go out there and do something different? We’ll give ‘em a whole different stage look…let’s give ‘em The Legacy album, start to finish.' It’s a nostalgic kind of tour, so why not?"

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