TESTAMENT Frontman: 'The '90s And The Early 2000s Were Really Tough For Us As A Metal Band'

Rodney Holder of Australia's Music Business Facts recently conducted an interview with TESTAMENT singer Chuck Billy. You can now listen to the chat using the audio player below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).

On whether he has much knowledge of the music business:

Chuck: "I'm all first hand. Even when we did have managers, from the get-go, I've always been kind of hands-on; I wanna know what's going on. We've been pretty much self-managed for quite some time now. And I actually started a management company as well over the last couple of years, so it's something we've kind of been… We've been doing it long enough. We've seen a lot. We've had a lot of labels throughout the years. We first started our career with Megaforce and six albums with Atlantic Records, and when that contract expired, we really went throught a lot of record companies that either went bankrupt or just disappeared. And at the time, we signed good deals, but in the long run, we ended up missing out on a few things. But the beauty of it was, along the way we learned something and started a record label in '94, and at least we got… those labels that did fold on us — like we had 'The Gathering' and 'Demonic' and 'Live At The Fillmore' and all these records like that were on those labels — and since we own the master recordings and did licensing deals, we got to keep them so we got to take them. At least they'd seen life after that and weren't just buried on the shelf of a label that just was no more. It's really been a lot for us; we went through a lot as far as the business — labels and agents — and we've kind of been thrown into it. And it's definitely had its ups and downs, good and bad, and thirty years later, here we are, man."

On whether TESTAMENT has a partnership agreement between the core members of the band:

Chuck: "When we first started, the original members were equal members, and then once we had the breakup, that's when me and Eric [Peterson, guitar] started the label and the company that we have been working as. So right now, it's just always been me and Eric. When the guys left, Alex [Skolnick, guitar] came back, I think, after fourteen years, and, I think, Greg [Christian, bass] after eight or nine. You know, so me and Eric have been holding the fort and kind of riding the wave with the ups and downs of the business, really. The '90s and the early 2000s were really tough for us as a metal band. Major labels, at that point, were really starting to drop a lot of metal bands and the radio industry wasn't playing metal very much on the radio anymore. I remember at that point, especially working with Atlantic, they were really pushing our singles, and there were at least close to two hundred stations across the U.S. that would play heavy metal in drivetime traffic, which was pretty unusual. And then that just kind of changed overnight; it was just gone and metal was off the charts, off everything — I mean, it was just insane what happened. And for us, unfortunately, we were at that period of our career where Alex was leaving the band, and Louie [Clemente, drums] left the band right before that. And things were kind of at the end for the band, the original band, at that point, and times were changing, music was changing, and it was the end of the record contract. Everything was happening at that point."

On whether it is a good living being a metal musician in 2016:

Chuck: "It can be. I mean, it's hard. For us, we survive. Nobody in the band has a [normal] job. Eric's never had a job; he's always survived through the band. But I think, for us, because me and Eric started our label and have been fortunate to license our music, we've been able to, as a company and business as well, do okay on that. We're really fortunate and in a good spot. It's, like, look, we've got our rights, we've got our label, everything's good, we've got a great band, we're putting some good music together lately. Shit, man… it's, like, what's gonna happen? [Laughs] It's all too good right now, man. [Laughs]"

TESTAMENT's twelfth album, "Brotherhood Of The Snake", was released on October 28 via Nuclear Blast.

Interview (audio):