http://www.riverfronttimes.com/ 2008-04-16/music/native-american-healing-and-a-trans-siberian-orchestra-guitarist-rejuvenate-metal-thrashers- testament/full
Native-American healing and a Trans-Siberian Orchestra guitarist rejuvenate
metal thrashers Testament
By D.X. Ferris
Published: April 16, 2008
Filled with spirits, prophecies and demons, Testament's music and story are
better than most, although the mundane details of the band's twenty-plus
year history are common. Popular '80s thrashers make classic records. The
lineup fractures. Their music changes. A major-label deal dissipates.
Sixteen replacement players rotate through the group, keeping the name
alive through more tours and albums.
Depending on how you want to score it, the San Francisco group is ranked
either the number five or six thrash band, the riff-roaring kings of the
junior varsity, who trail behind Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth.
The unique accomplishment in Testament's continuous career got heavier as
the years went by — though it wasn't a steady progression.
Creative differences altered the classic lineup, which featured wunderkind
guitarist Alex Skolnick, a student of shred king Joe Satriani. In recent
years, he's toured with the arena-packing Christmas-metal crew the
Trans-Siberian Orchestra, and he's played small clubs with his self-titled
jazz trio. Skolnick was just fifteen when he joined Testament, and by 1992,
he was itching to try new styles. He left after The Ritual album, which
earned a lukewarm reception. 1994's Low balanced death-metal dabbling with
a six-minute ballad, "Trail of Tears." It wasn't an attempt to score a prom
theme; the track lamented the bloody destruction of singer Chuck Billy's
Native American culture. That album was the end of the band's commercial
aspirations, but not its career.
"All we knew was that the fans admired our early stuff, and we always knew
we had to stay true to that," reflects Billy, one of two members that's
been with the group constantly since its 1987 Atlantic Records debut, The
Legacy, arguably the best of its nine original studio records. "The Ritual
wasn't what this band was about. So we started getting heavier and stepping
back to our roots. A lot of people admired us for being a cool underground
band. And when I was a kid, that was the kind of band I admired."
As original members fell out, Testament toured clubs. With half of
death-metal legends Death in the lineup, 1997's Demonic found a brutal
midground between thrash and death, but the lineup didn't hold. Slayer
drummer Dave Lombardo sat in for 1999's The Gathering. It was well
received, but still was no Legacy, which was equally funky and thunderous.
The Legacy was written when the band was still known as Legacy and featured
vocals and lyrics by future Exodus singer Steve "Zetro" Souza. Thrash had
an occult streak, but that album's poetic lyric sheet was the movement's
most Dungeons & Dragons moment. Supernatural themes continued on 1988's The
New Order and 1989's Practice What You Preach. Inspired by
sixteenth-century doom prophet Nostradamus, Billy and crew began writing
songs like "Souls of Black" and "Trial By Fire," which had more words than
actual lyrics, like "Hey/This is what the people say/A new way/A trial by
fire!" A different strain of mysticism would help resurrect the classic
lineup.
Billy's father had grown up on a Pomo tribe reservation but didn't want his
kids to live that kind of life. Growing up, Billy was just vaguely aware of
his heritage. In 2000, one of his friends told him she wanted him to meet
another friend, Charlie, who was a Native American medicine man. Later, she
said she'd had a dream in which Billy and the shaman were sitting around a
campfire, putting on war paint, preparing to go into battle. Billy laughed
it off. Then the singer found himself fighting for his life.
Months later, Billy was diagnosed with germ-cell seminoma. Doctors said he
had a cancerous tumor the size of a squash in his chest cavity. Thus began
a two-year struggle with the disease. Billy began taking steroids to offset
a five-days-a- week regimen of chemotherapy. Soon, his six-four frame
ballooned from water weight, pushing him past his regular weight of 240
pounds. One day, Billy was reeling from treatments when there was a knock
at his door. It was Charlie the medicine man, who had shown up unannounced.
He offered to perform a healing ceremony.
The medicine man cleared Billy's living room floor, then he told Billy to
lie down and close his eyes. Charlie took him on a healing journey. The
singer describes it as a mystical experience. Eyes closed, Billy felt the
healer dancing around him, chanting and playing a flute. Feeling like he
was floating off into space, he heard howling and blowing wind as the
healer invoked Mother Earth. The medicine man brushed an eagle feather
across Billy's chest, and the singer felt something move inside his body.
The ritual complete, Charlie told Billy, "The wind is going to be your
spirit guide to get you through all this."
Billy's chemotherapy continued. A few weeks later, the family had a party.
Late that night, the sound of wind woke him up as furniture blew into the
swimming pool. The treatments had been causing stomach problems. The
frontman went to the downstairs bathroom, hoping to shake something loose.
Seated on the toilet, he looked outside and saw beer cans spiraling in the
air blowing around in a funnel cloud. Then his bowels moved, and he felt
sickness leaving his body.
"Right then, the beer cans hit the ground," recalls Billy. "It was like a
movie. I woke my wife up and said, 'I don't have cancer any more.' I went
to the doctor that week, and the doctor said the tumor wasn't cancerous any
more."
After two more spiritual trips to healers and a nine-hour operation, the
shrunken tumor was gone, and doctors said Billy was cancer-free.
"I believe 100 percent that [Native American medicine] cured me," says
Billy, who was moved to rediscover his roots. "That's what got me through.
It was definitely a very spiritual, enlightening time of my life."
The sickness helped heal his band. Friends held a benefit concert to offset
a mountain of medical bills. Souza and Skolnick rejoined their old
bandmates, performing as Legacy. Billy performed a song at the end, and the
vibes were good. Skolnick rejoined in 2001, to rerecord classic songs with
modern production on the First Strike Still Deadly album. A European
promoter lured the remaining Legacy-era players back into the fold for one
show in 2005, which turned into a tour. Momentum carried into talks of a
new record. In 2006, drummer Louie Clemente's arthritis forced him to bow
out. Testament ultimately recruited another ex-Slayer drummer, Paul
Bostaph.
The strong new Formation of Damnation doesn't sound like Testament's
death-metal days, and while it still doesn't have the headbanging groove of
The Legacy, the recognizable crunch of Skolnick and never-departed
guitarist Eric Peterson plays like a worthy sequel to The New Order.
"As long as Alex wants to do it and we're having fun, I think we'll be
doing this for a while," says Billy. "The music is keeping me younger. I
haven't grayed. I figure, one day, I'm going to turn that corner. But I
look at my heroes like [metal singers] Dio and Halford and say, 'They're
still rocking.' And hopefully, I can follow in their shoes."
