Hysteria Magazine commissioned me to do this interview with Chuck Billy, vocalist for thrash metal band Testament.

I’ve loved heavy metal music for almost 30 years. Ever since I came across the Iron Maiden video clip for Be Quick Or Be Dead in 1992, it’s been an integral part of my identity and my life.

So it was an honour to be given the opportunity to interview Chuck Billy, the vocalist and front-man for well-known metal outfit Testament.

For those not in the know, Testament have been around since the early ’80s. They’ve been highly influential on the style of music known as thrash metal and have sold an estimated 14 million albums.

I will concede that I was actually quite nervous in the lead-up to this interview. This is despite the fact that I’ve worked in media and content for more than 12 years. I couldn’t tell you the number of interviews, calls for comment, fact checks and so forth that I’ve done. And yet, I felt my heart racing as I dialled the phone number.

I’m not much into celebrity culture but I suppose this is how people feel when talking to those sorts of people.

Thankfully, I’d done my research, my questions were thoroughly prepared, and I’d practised reading them out loud. As so often occurs when we are faced with an imminent and anxiety-inducing situation, the nervousness quickly dissipated and the interview went smoothly.

To be clear, it is perfectly normal and ok to feel nervous beforehand – but it’s amazing how quickly and often that passes, usually if you’ve trained and prepared for the situation.

Chuck is a charismatic and confident individual and this interview came off the back of the band’s impending new album, Titans Of Creation. There was an obvious angle for this story – Chuck, his wife, and various crew and band members had been diagnosed with COVID-19 after returning from a recent European tour. This fact had been widely publicised and, as these things go, it almost certainly had the effect of drumming up more publicity.

Nonetheless, I wanted to avoid asking too many predictable questions. Sure, the substance of the piece had to be around the new album, but seeing as Chuck is such a personable fellow, I was looking for something based more around him.

I found my answer in a light, endearing, Chuck-Billy-at-home-style video shot by the record label.

It was one of several videos to feature individual band members “in their element” intended to promote the impending album. It showed Chuck living in his Discovery Bay waterside home, playing golf at the local golf club (complete with pentagram-adorned ball) and talking about how he gave up riding Harleys but now really enjoys boating.

There it was! A good talking point. And best of all, for the first time in my career I would get to merge my background in boating journalism with my interest in heavy metal.

Something to keep in mind when doing these sorts of interviews is the fact that the interview subject has in all likelihood already been asked identical or very similar questions. It is a fact that at this level of music journalism there are a lot of people who are mad, passionate, life-long devotees to heavy metal, but who may not have the professional or industry background found in mainstream publications.

This means that interviewers often ask the same questions, like variations of “tell us about the recording process” or “what’s next for the band”. A professional who has been doing interviews for many years – such as Chuck Billy – will of course answer these questions without any hint of annoyance or boredom. Nonetheless, the result for the publication is an interview that may end up feeling similar to the multitude of other interviews.

It is also a fact that professional interviewees who have been answering similar questions all day may appreciate the opportunity to talk about something that is relevant, but nonetheless a little different.

I had this experience when I was privileged to interview Nick Holmes, vocalist for Paradise Lost and Bloodbath. We’d been allocated a set amount of time to talk about the new Paradise Lost album, Obsidian. My final questions was about Nick’s love of old horror movies. This in turn became a delightful, interesting and – most importantly – useable 10-minute account of his top-five movies from a specific era.

With Chuck Billy we didn’t have quite as much time to talk about things outside of the album. Nonetheless, I got to ask him about his love of boats. It turns out, his new boat was a model called the Legacy (Testament were known as Legacy in their early days – and The Legacy was the title of their first album). So that got a laugh and made for a nice paragraph in the interview.

I think the article turned out well. People seem to like it. It met the objective, which was to promote the new album, while managing to capture a slightly different angle.

But I was still bloody nervous at first.

Incidentally, Titans Of Creation is an excellent thrash metal album. As I said in the article:

We ought to rejoice that bands like Testament are still giving us killer music.