TESTAMENT singer Chuck Billy has looked back across nearly four decades of the band's records, and he doesn't pretend the Bay Area thrashers sound the way they did in 1987. Speaking on the She Shreds With Rasan podcast, he set the debut The Legacy against 2025's Para Bellum and called the gap "totally a different universe."
Tuning down, catching up
Billy described the early TESTAMENT as "a bunch of young kids" building thrash as they understood it. Two things changed the sound since, he said. The first is drummer Chris Dovas, who he believes keeps the band current, "especially the drums." The second is tuning: back then the band didn't know what suited his voice, and the old records sound "really high-pitched" to him now. Today they play in a tuning that is comfortable for him, which he hears as "warmer and deeper and aggressive."
Put the two albums side by side, Billy said, and listeners might still recognize the same band, "but you would definitely go, 'Wow, they're definitely a different band.'"
He also talked about younger metal bands who cite TESTAMENT as an influence, many of them born after The Legacy came out. "Metal's like a weed," he laughed. "You just can't kill that thing. It just keeps growing and surviving." He said he was glad to be one link in a chain of inspiration that runs back through punk into thrash and beyond.
What's next
Para Bellum came out in October 2025 via Nuclear Blast. It was recorded with Juan Urteaga, mixed by Jens Bogren for the first time, and wrapped in another Eliran Kantor painting. In August, Billy told us about the next record: the band already had nine songs, with Dovas and Eric Peterson pulling it toward death metal.
Before that comes Billy's memoir, Holding My Breath: The Two Testaments Of Chuck Billy, announced in April and due November 10 via Permuted Press. Co-written with Dave Erickson, it has a foreword by JUDAS PRIEST's Rob Halford and an afterword by LAMB OF GOD's Randy Blythe. The "Old Testament" half covers the birth of Bay Area thrash and the rise of TESTAMENT. The "New Testament" half deals with the cancer diagnosis Billy received at 38, his Native American and Mexican-American heritage, and the metal community that stood behind him.