The Metal Forge (www.themetalforge.com) has issued an interview with TESTAMENT frontman Chuck Billy, conducted by Justin Donnelly. The following is an excerpt:

Although many have coined the regrouping of Testament as a reunion, Billy doesn’t see it that way at all.

“I think that we’re beyond the reunion tour thing now, especially now that we’ve decided to do an album together now. It’s simply a return to the original line-up, and that’s now been cemented given that everyone’s agreed to do the next album. A new album is definitely going to be happening this year. Skolnick and Barker, who has been playing drums for us since last year, have been up in the Bay Area working on writing new material, so we are going to have an album out this year. We have about five or six songs written so far, with the aim of writing about fifteen songs in total. There’s one song in particular at the moment that is right in the direction of The Gathering, but I would say that it takes it one level higher. I mean it is just a brutal thrash song. It’s really, really good. It blew me away when I heard it. The Gathering is one of my favourite Testament albums, and this one song had me saying to the other guys, ‘Guys, if you could write ten more of those, we’re going to smoke The Gathering big time!’ (Laughs) It would bring Testament up to a whole new level. Barker did such a great job on this song too. I can’t tell you when we’ll start recording, but I can tell you that Andy Sneap is going to mix the new album. We actually have time scheduled in April with him I believe. I mean he has a lot of projects on the go at the moment because he’s so in demand, so that schedule could blow out a little bit. But we can afford to wait. He knows metal, and he knows exactly what Testament is trying to do.”

Read the full interview here.