In a recent interview with AMFM Magazine, Testament vocalist Chuck Billy discussed the progress of recording the band’s upcoming studio album and confirmed that Nightwish’s Floor Jansen is taking place in the album.
“On this record, I don’t wanna say the word ‘ballad’, but we wrote a slower song like we had back in the ’80s and ’90s that we wrote on this record,” Billy started explaining. “And it’s really awesome, really good. We’re gonna bring in a guest vocalist, Floor Jansen from Nightwish. She’s gonna sing on it with me. And we’re gonna put in some string section into the song.”
“We’re not afraid to take those chances where a lot of bands criticize you, like, ‘Oh, we don’t write ballads. ‘What are you doing that [for]?’” he explained. “But you know what? At this point in our lives and career, we’re writing to make us happy first and foremost and what feels good, what feels right, and this song just felt right now to kind of do this again,” he added.
Testament has been working on their new album for a while. According to Chuck Billy, they are getting closer to finishing the album, but it still needs a bit more time before it’s completely ready for release. “We’re almost done recording right now. We finished, I’d say, three quarters of the recording before we left for Europe,” the rocker revealed during the same interview. “And we have a three-week break now. And Steve’s [DiGiorgio] in the studio finishing bass and Eric’s [Peterson] finishing up some of the rhythm guitars, but out of the 11 songs, I already tracked eight of ’em. So I just have a couple more songs to sing. We have another break after this U.S. tour in November. We’ll finish up all the backing vocals and anything that needs to be — after getting to live with it, which is something nice.”
The band had planned to release their new album this year, but there aren’t many details yet on its release date. In the meantime, fans can still catch Testament live. Their current tour wraps up on October 27th at The Warfield in San Francisco, California.