Thrash titans Testament recently unveiled some in-depth info about their next studio album. Decibel had the chance to interview one of the biggest voices in metal, Testament’s Chuck Billy, about the band’s upcoming album ‘The Dark Roots of Earth’ and the lyrical concepts that will be found within.

“There’s a song called ‘Native Blood,’ which is basically a song about my Native heritage,” explains Billy. “It’s almost like a protest song, that the Native Americans have a voice that needs to be heard — that’s the chorus of the song. There’s another called ‘True American Hate,’ which was inspired by when we sent all our troops overseas there, and we were just seeing in the news when all that was going on a lot of young kids, under 10 years old, out there with their families burning American flags. And that was a pretty shocking thing to see, to see that generation, a kid that young being taught to hate that much. It makes you think what’s going to happen, 10 to 15 years from now, when the majority of these kids have just been raised to hate? It struck me as a little odd.”

The Testament frontman continued, “There’s a song called ‘Cold Embrace,’ which we kinda hoped we’d be able to pitch the song into one of the ‘Twilight’ series movies; it’s a song about a girl becoming a vampire and never being able to see the sun again. ‘The Dark Roots of Earth’ is kind of a play on the band we have together, just like a metaphor, like Testament is a tree and all of us in this group are really embedded in the planet, in the earth, the environment and our surroundings. It was kind of a play on that. ‘Rise Up for War’ is more of a war song, like your preparing yourself for war, going into battle. There is a lot of cool stuff there.”

‘The Dark Roots of Earth’ has been recorded in full and is currently being mixed by Andy Sneap, who has made records for many legendary acts including Napalm Death, Kreator and Cradle of Filth.

Testament are currently on a monster North American tour with Anthrax and Death Angel.

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