Testament: legacy of brutality?

-So, here’s your new album, ‘Formation to Damnation”, the first in a long period. Chuck said it was kind of an extension of ‘The gathering’ Lp, but how would you present it?

-Eric : Well, there’s the next record after ‘The Gathering’, but I think, it’s more an extension of the ‘New order’ album, which talked about future events and thing that had to happen, and this record is the same thing, but now we’ve seen actually things happen, like the eagle has landed, and experiences we came through like Chuck’s cancer, or with the other guys, leave me forever, bad relationships, so there’s a lot of stuff in ‘Formation to Damnation’, we’ve seen some of the politics of the world goes to war, we’ve seen a lot of things happen, a lot of predictions that are coming through. Even if we believed already in some of that stuff, we couldn’t talk about that in ‘New order’, to say about the record, concept wise. And I think, music wise, it’s all very settled down. It sounds very old school, but it’s new, and doesn’t sound like a copy of what we did a long time ago, even if it shares the same feeling.

-The return of Alex means more guitar solos, too?

-Eric: Yes, and my guitar solos: I actually play ‘Dirty for the fear of mother ‘and, for ‘More than meet the eye’, We do back to back, he does the first one, I do the second one. A lot of people don’t know that. That’s a new element, having Alex back, playing as he used to, and even better, and myself having not played guitar for a long time, so I can bring more themes and solo stuff to it, but having Alex back just made the full circle. Alex was missing, when we did ‘Demonic’ and, on ‘The gathering’, a lot of songs were based on leads, and then it was just small parts, but now we’ve got lead parts back, Alex worked out that way.

-How’s Chuck today?

Eric: He’s fully recovered, he’s got a good health, he’s still good, you can hear his voice, and it’s strong. He stopped smoking about a year now, and I totally noticed in his singing, because there was a point where his singing became very growly, and he didn’t have that young breath, more powerful, cleaner, like James Hetfield old style, if you see what I mean. And so, on this record, I’m hearing that. He does jogging, have his hairs back, everything back, we’re all very happy now and try to enjoy it as it happens!

-Talking about the lyrics, can you say it’s a concept lp too, or songs that can be heard separately?

-Peter: It’s a concept about thing that happens, but I don’t think those songs are predictions of things of the future, but more about things that happen already, little events, little bit of political stuff, ‘The evil has landed’ kind of talked about in 9/11, which could have been almost predictable. I don’t want to talk again about 9/11 but, when we wrote the lyrics, Tony said he didn’t want to, because we have a regular, we never say who’s right or wrong, we just sing about what happen, using core words and making it metal, joint pinpointing a piece of history, rather going we are Americans, the others are the bad guys or whatever, which generally happen then, here is not like that.

-And what do you think of the Slayer version of 9/11, seen from the point of view of the terrorists?

-Eric: They have a song about that? I didn’t know! But that’s Slayer, they always want to push the buttons! SAAAAAAAAAATAN!!! I didn’t hear that yet, so I can’t give you my opinion.

-Once again, you produced this LP: is it to say you’re never as well served as by yourself?

Eric: I’m a control freak! I just have such a big vision, and I don’t just write guitar riffs, I actually oversee everything, and it’s hard to just let go. I did a couple of times, and things didn’t go right. Producing, for me, means being there for everything, make sure that everything goes the way I’m hearing it. But, if for example Andy Sneap or anyone else has an idea, I don’t say no, I ask what he means, and we discuss, if it’s a good idea. I pretty much like to produce, maybe that’s something I’ll step on later; I’m good at hearing stuff…I think!

-Andy Sneap was in the studio: what did you appreciate the most amongst the records he work on, in the past or recently?

-Eric: There’s the first record where he actually recorded us, on the other records, he was only mixing. I love the first Arch Enemy record he did, “Wages of Sin”, the first with Angela, and to me the best. As a fan, I listen to the other, but they are not so good, in my opinion. I definitely love what he did with “The gathering”: he brought us to a new territory. We used 16 bits stuff to record that record, and then on VHS tapes, which it’s very cheap recording. We recorded everything down to two tracks, which a very old school, they did that in the fifties: once you put something too much, you can’t go in there and take it away, but with two tracks, you can. I also love ‘Dead Heart, dead World ‘by Nevermore, and the Opeth stuff too. Andy has this really well balanced mix and the clarity. He sounds timeless to me, as too many records always seem dated after a while, and that’s what I like about him.

-This time, it’s an historical line up reunited, with Chuck and you but also Alex, Greg and Paul: how did it happen, what pushed you to do that?

-Eric: We were quite happy with Steve Smythe in the band, but, we he left, we were kind of lazy, to try to find somebody that fitted us. When Steve said he was gonna tour with Nevermore, Chuck and I were on the verge of saying we where done, because I was tired to see new guys, for a record or just a tour. So, when we got an offer to do a show in Europe with Alex, we did it and felt that old magic, this is Testament, and I think Alex felt it too, specially when we saw the reaction of the crowd, the kids in London at the Koko for the DVD, being there was even better, the vibe, to see people’s face there, so happy to see all of us up there. So people talked a lot on the Internet, and we’ve got more and more phone calls for shows in Brazil, ten shows, and Japan, Argentina, many places, which is pretty cool. And then, as you know, we’ve got a record deal. But, at the beginning, it was only supposed to be two shows only.

-And Paul (Bostaph) is back too!

-Eric: Yes, Paul is back. At one point, we had Nick Barker, from Cradle of Filth and Dimmu Borgir, and I had him in mind for a long time, I wanted him to be in my other band, Dragonlord and I tried to attract him for Testament too. He actually fitted very good with us, he jammed on all sort of songs with me, but we had this problem: he got caught because he didn’t have the right papers, to work in the States, and they said he couldn’t come back for maybe seven or eight months, and we had to pay 5OOO dollars for a work visa. So we get the money, without knowing if he would come back or not. When we talked about that, we had a phone call from someone saying that Paul was quitting Exodus. We were wondering why, asking if he didn’t want to play metal anymore, or if he was just pissed off of them. I called him up, told our situation and asked him if he wanted to join Testament, because we had those two shows to perform. So he came for the shows, and felt great about it, as it was three years ago. We felt weird with Chuck with the line up when he left, but then, the timing was just perfect. Everybody said to us that Paul fits better, because he’s from the Bay Area, he comes from the same genre, he was going to the same clubs when we were younger, all kind of worked out.

-Talking about that, in the eighties, you created a new musical movement, trash metal, with bands you know: what do you think of the evolution of those bands? Metallica, for exemple?

-Eric: You want my opinion on Metallica? I think that, for any band, specially if you have the original line up, and you’re together that long, as Testament are, all the touring and doing records and touring and record again, but by the time we got to ‘The Ritual’, everything was a compromise, like, if I had a song, it was too heavy, or someone would say he likes it, but he doesn’t know if we that, better to do a slower beat, and then Louis shouldn’t do those rolls, not rolls but cymbals, and so everybody going up trying to make everybody feels comfortable, and before you know it, you have a record where just everybody’s safe, and you’re compromise. It’s not like how songs was meant to be, it became everybody’s song, and I think that Metallica, like all bands, go for that, but they are like millionaires, you’ve got all that money into it, and you end up doing shit, because you’re worried about paying your rent, making today the day, everybody saying yes, master, everybody’s a yes man in the record company, anybody says it sucks. That’s the way I see it. When people are rich like that, you don’t tell them they suck. Metallica was a big influence on me, to get my band started, it was the birth of a whole genre, which came from the Bay Area and sort of spread, we started in the same clubs, playing together. Look at Slayer, they never changed their style, but they never got huge and rich. But they do well. I do pretty good, but I can’t go buy a Ferrari if I want to. I can buy all the food I want, to feed my family, but I can’t go to Paris and have lunch! I don’t know how it would feel to be that rich and then write metal. I don’t think I could write metal because I would be so happy. For me, metal is about struggle. If you’re millionaire, how can you write about metal? Unless you’re…Sid Vicious!

-There’s an explosion of new trash metal bands today: what do you think of it and do you like some of them?

-Eric: I don’t know those bands, because all the time, I’ve been writing this record, and everybody tells me that trash is back, but at our shows I’ve seen a lot of kids with longer hairs again, wearing stretch jeans and Motorhead patches. I know there are a lot of bands sounding like the early eighties trash, that’s kind of cool! I need to her them!

-Have you, at some point, been tempted by to play forms of music than trash metal?

-Eric: Yes, I do, I have this other band called Dragonlord, which is rather atmospheric black metal, but mellower. But it’s more extreme, very different : I did it because, if I didn’t have it, I would have tried to turn Testament into kind of black metal, because that’s what I felt in my heart, but I knew I couldn’t make Testament like that, no way, no one would have understood it. It actually helped me to write a better Testament record, because I got it out of the system, I got the Devil out, basically!

-And, Is Dragonlord going on?

-Eric: Yes, there’s a DVD coming out, a concert we did in Japan, with Venom and Onslaught and Sodom, it was a great show, we’ve got five angles cameras, the sound was very good that night when we played, so it’s really cool, we’re really happy of it. And I’ll probably soon work on a new Dragonlord record, which will probably be out later this year.

-After all those years in music, what are you the most proud of, amongst what you realised, record or else?

-Eric: I would have to say this record, because it took a lot of time to make it; we didn’t have a new record in nine years, so it’s material that we started writing it in 2003, then we toured and then started to write again in 2005 a little bit, and we tried to make songs better and better, despite the changes of line up. I’m pretty proud of that record, and of ‘The gathering’ too, which is still one of my favourites. I really like old stuff we’ve done, but I don’t like the recordings, I don’t think we captured it like when we play live, which is more brutal, so much fucking heavier. When I put those two records, the guitars, the drums are just terrible.

-When will we see Testament in France again?

-Eric: Yes, Testament will be at the Hellfest festival in June, and, hopefully, we’ll be coming back maybe in September, maybe with In Flames, maybe not. I would like to get Testament, Exodus, Death Angel and Sadus touring together in Europe, that’s something I try to convince Chuck to do, and this line up would be a killer, with maybe some new bands, like Municipal Waste, that would be kind of cool

-I’m looking forward to see it!

-Eric: Yes: life’s hard, but Testament’s harder!

Interview made on 13^th March, 2008 in Paris, by Jean Paul Coillard.

Photos: Carlos Pop.

Thanks to Valérie, from Nuclear Blast.