At the end of a recent tour, Testament was on a bill with Mr. Big. After the gig, Mr. Big bassist Billy Sheehan approached the members of Testament.
“Billy had never seen us, and he came up and watched,” Testament singer Chuck Billy recalled in a recent phone interview.
“After the show, he came back and said, ‘Man I’ve just got to tell you that was one of the most enthusiastic shows I’ve seen in a long time. It was so good to see a band like you guys that still look like you’re enjoying what you’re doing.’ He goes ‘I haven’t seen a band like that in decades and I’ve seen Jimi Hendrix.”
What makes Sheehan’s comment particularly striking is Testament, one of the founding fathers of thrash metal, isn’t a band of young bucks with boundless amounts of energy just ready to be unleashed on stage. With the exception of new drummer Chris Dovas, the core members — Billy, guitarist Eric Peterson, guitarist Alex Skolnick and bassist Steve Di Giorgio — are in their 50s or 60s and have upward of four decades of shows under their belts.
Despite reaching an age when aches and pains commonly become part of everyday life, Billy said he and his bandmates haven’t had to make many concessions to age whenever they step on stage.
“Of course, I don’t bang my head a thousand miles an hour like I did when I was in my 20s, but we’re still very enthusiastic, especially playing these songs,” Billy said. “We’re running around, we’re jumping, we’re still banging our head when it needs to be banged. It’s still a very energetic show.”
The songs that the singer mentions are the ones that populated the first two Testament albums, “The Legacy” (1987) and “The New Order” (1988).
As things generally work in the music industry, when 35 years had passed since the release of those albums, the original masters of those albums were returned to Testament. The band — not a record company or another entity — now owns those albums and will continue to acquire more of their catalog in future years.
Testament’s label, Nuclear Blast Records, then offered to re-release newly mastered versions “The Legacy” and “The New Order.” Billy was excited for the first two albums to get a sonic upgrade.
“Of course, technology is way better now than it was 38 years ago, so there’s a big difference in the sound production now, the way they sound now,” Billy said of the new editions of the albums. “I always had a problem when I heard those records, like on Sirius radio or something or on the (terrestrial) radio. They were just so squashed, you know…Now they have more room to breathe and they sound bigger and fuller.”
Once plans to re-release “The Legacy” and “The New Order” were in motion, Testament decided to do a tour last year on which it played both albums in their entirety.
“Not only is it fun to do, but it does take us back to really our heyday, back when we had 20 songs and put all our efforts into those songs when we performed them,” Billy said. “We’re right back in that mindset right now playing these songs again.”
Now the band is moving forward by doing a tour this spring in which their third album, “Practice What You Preach,” will be featured in the show.
“The Legacy” and “The New Order” — as well as “Practice What You Preach” — certainly deserve a second chapter. They’ve come to be seen as cornerstones in a Testament album catalog that now numbers a dozen studio albums. In a larger context, they helped shape thrash metal, a faster, louder and more aggressive brand of heavy metal that emerged during the mid-1980s in Testament’s home base of the San Francisco Bay area.
That scene also spawned Metallica, Exodus, Death Angel, Forbidden and dozens of lesser-known acts, while the Bay area also drew in thrash metal bands from other locales — including Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax — as bands found the San Francisco area to have a large audience for metal and multiple venues that booked metal bands.
Billy said Testament and their thrash metal peers were just getting going when the Bay Area music scene shifted and, in turn, helped to launch this new style of metal into the rock music mainstream.
“The Bay Area, at that time, was really known for like glam metal hair bands or punk rock. And when Metallica those other bands were bringing another style of energy and playing, all those hair bands left to go pursue (careers in) Hollywood,” Billy said. “So, it really opened up a lot of venues.
“Slayer and Megadeth and all these bands were coming up to the Bay Area to play because it was like a breeding ground in all these venues and all these cool fans are showing up supporting this style of music,” he said, noting that thrash metal shared with punk a general theme of going against society, which helped these genres to co-exist. “I think thrash metal kind of stood for that. It took that attitude of punk, but took it a step further and put a little more melody into it.”
While Testament has never achieved the success of Megadeth, Slayer or Anthrax — not to mention the stadium-filling mega-popularity of Metallica — the band has become highly respected within the metal scene while racking up combined worldwide album sales of 14 million.
The band also weathered the early 1990s grunge era – a time when some of metal’s audience turned away from the genre and many of the ’80s thrash metal bands broke up — Billy’s bout with cancer in the early 2000s, as well as multiple lineup changes. Through it all, Testament continued to tour and release albums on a steady basis.
In fact, the group is well along in recording a new studio album, which should be released this year. Billy said eight songs are essentially finished, and virtually all of the drum, bass and rhythm guitar tracks were going to be finished by last fall.
The singer said Dovas has made his presence felt on the next album. He’s been involved in writing the music with Peterson and has brought more of a modern metal element into the Testament sound on the new songs.
“A lot of people are probably going to hear the record and go ‘Wow, holy smokes that sure doesn’t sound like a 38-year-old band. That doesn’t sound like some guys in their 60s making heavy metal, either,’” Billy said. “We’re just inspired by what’s going on.
“You never know where it’s going to go once you start writing the next record. You always try to challenge yourself and make it better than the last,” he said. “I never know until I hear the final mix, to be able to make that call to say ‘You know what, this is better than the last record. ‘They always surprise me at that point. But this one, we’re at the point of making the music where we’re like, man, we’re excited right now just listening to the demo part of it and tracking because it feels so fresh and it feels like we’re being experimental, which is great.”
An Evening with Testament
WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday, April 30
WHERE: Rialto Theatre, 318 E. Congress Street, Tucson
COST: Tickets start at $32.50
INFO: rialtotheatre.com
This article appears in Apr 17-24, 2025.