In the Bay Area of mid-1980s California, a heavy metal scene was forming that was angrier, louder and much, much faster than anything that came before: thrash. Progenitors Metallica are the most well-known of its alumni, but this corner of the West Coast spawned dozens of other brilliant bands seemingly unbounded by tempo, or sometimes even melody.
With their blistering, high-octane riffing and superb technical chops, one of the most formidable and resilient is Testament. Despite having enough lineup changes to rival the Fall, cancer scares and the 1990s grunge takeover that edged out cut-off denim for plaid shirts, Testament are still selling out tours, gnashing at the heels of the commercially dominating Big Four metal bands – Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax – and releasing new records with just as much vigour. The most recent, Para Bellum, came out last week.
It all started in late 1983 when, fresh from high school, Eric Peterson and cousin Derrick Ramirez from Alameda near Oakland, formed Testament’s precursor, Legacy. The two guitarists played their first show above a record store with local punks Rebels and Infidels, but their next – while clad in priest collars – was supporting Slayer. “That was our first taste of a sold-out crowd,” says Peterson, as the band dial in from their homes across the US. “We were so nervous. We only had four songs.”
Ramirez soon quit, so Peterson recruited local Berkeley teenager Alex Skolnick – one of the most accomplished guitarists in metal, who studied under the virtuoso Joe Satriani. “I was into Ozzy and Dio,” says Skolnick. “Eric told me: we have to speed it up!”
Completing the lineup was Louie Clemente on drums, bassist Greg Christian and Steve “Zetro” Souza on vocals. They’d go drinking together at the epicentre of the Bay Area thrash underground, Ruthie’s Inn; Peterson and Skolnick would “have a couple kamikazes [cocktails], plough our way through the crowd and just pummel people,” says Peterson of the pair’s boisterous moshpit demeanour. “They wouldn’t know what happened – that was kind of the vibe.”
Souza quit to join fellow thrashers Exodus, leaving a gap for a frontman. The band knew a kid called Chuck Billy, known to Peterson and Clemente as The Cheese for his ever-present grin, who they’d occasionally spot hovering by beer kegs at parties. “He was very quiet but had a kind of sinister laugh,” says Peterson.
The problem was that Billy fronted a hard-rocking glam band called Guilt: the kind of music that thrash metal fans poured scorn on, and sometimes worse. “You had to fit in: if you came from a glam band, and you went in [Ruthie’s Inn] – especially at Exodus shows – I think you got beaten up,” Peterson says. But when Billy decided to audition for Testament, Peterson and Clemente checked out a Guilt gig in San Francisco. “The guys had their Paul Stanley hair, doing their cute moves,” says Peterson. “Then Chuck came out wearing a trench coat and started breaking beer bottles over his head. He looked glam, but he had this presence.”
Billy got the job, and thus began his glam deprogramming. Out with the spandex – a decision Billy says he was “happy for, believe me, being a big guy” – and in with Reebok hi-tops. Eric coached Billy into learning how to snarl along with the frenetic, bouncing-ball pace of thrash. “Forget trying to float a melody,” says Billy. “You have to keep up the pace.”
By 1986, thrash metal was peaking. It was the year of Slayer’s furious 29-minute stormer Reign in Blood, Metallica’s Master of Puppets and Megadeth’s Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? Somehow, the riffs got faster yet more complex, technical mastery mixed in with the breakneck speed. And it was the year Testament auditioned for Megaforce, the influential label that released Metallica’s first records. But the night that label owners Jon and Marsha were in town, Metallica’s wildly inventive bassist Cliff Burton, then only 24, was killed in a tour bus crash.
“Our audition the next day was very sombre,” says Billy. “Here we were about to have the biggest performance of our lives in this unusual situation.” But Megaforce signed, the band changed their name to Testament and, in 1987, released debut album The Legacy to acclaim. Crammed into a van, the band toured extensively, supporting all the thrash mainstays – except Metallica, with Billy wondering if this is because Peterson married their guitarist Kirk Hammett’s ex – then climbing to top billing themselves.
But with constant touring and the pressures of recording a new album each year, this hectic schedule eventually frayed relations. “Five records in a row, this pressure-cooker environment,” says Skolnick. “We were very young. I was a teen on that first record. After back-to-back recording and touring, we needed some rest and a long break, which we never had.”
By now it was 1992 and grunge had swept in, hitting pause on thrash metal’s mainstream moment. Newly on Atlantic, Testament were under pressure to release something radio-friendly, which resulted in their next record The Ritual. Now a fan favourite, it was such a departure at the time that Testament refused to play its songs live. The frazzled Skolnick left to pursue jazz, later enrolling at the New School of Jazz and Contemporary Music (his other combo, the Alex Skolnick Trio, has a new record out too). “Louie and Greg were horrified,” Peterson says. “Me and Chuck were like, ‘OK’. The first thing I thought was: we can get heavy [again].”
But a “scuff” led to Clemente quitting while on the road, leaving Testament without a drummer at a sold-out final show on Skolnick’s farewell tour. “We were inviting people from the crowd,” says Peterson. “Chuck was like: does anybody know this song? People are jumping up and giving it a go. It was a weird night, man.”
Testament continued in one form or another, recruiting other acclaimed and storied musicians such as Slayer’s Dave Lombardo; they down-tuned their instruments and got even heavier, with Billy perfecting his death-metal growl on 1999’s The Gathering. But in 2001, Billy was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, with a large tumour lodged in his chest.
While undergoing treatment, Billy – who was raised Catholic but whose father was Native American Pomo – reconnected with his Indigenous roots. Along with chemotherapy, he contacted Native healers and medicine men with whom he shared mysterious spiritual experiences involving wolf dens, chanting, eagle feathers and astral travel, and who he credits with helping him to fully recover.
A 2005 tour with the classic lineup reunited the band, where one gig “turned into five, five turned into 10,” says Billy. But they played only occasionally and remained “off in these other worlds,” adds Skolnick, who was then a full-time session player. Billy worked in transport – giving safety lectures, presumably not about smashing bottles over one’s head – while Peterson focused on his symphonic black metal band, Dragonlord, until a major 2008 tour offer with Motörhead, Heaven & Hell and Judas Priest was offered on the condition they record a new album.
So they did – and never stopped. A couple of decades later, Testament show no signs of slowing down, save for the occasional ballad; with new drummer Chris Dovas in tow, their latest album, Para Bellum introduces elements like icy, black metal-style tremolo riffing, with themes covering the CIA agent-mangling Havana syndrome and, naturally, AI.
“Destruction’s coming by the terabyte,” growls Billy on single, Infanticide AI, “the future’s destined to replace the soul” – though Skolnick believes metal music is safe from these techno-dystopian torments. “There’s no way it’s going to sound like guys getting in a room hashing out a tune and radiating as humans,” he says.
And through all their winding sonic travels, lineup changes, trials and tribulations, the sounds of each of the band’s eras radiate something distinctly human. “They’re all just different modes of us, you know?” says Peterson.
