TESTAMENT guitarist Eric Peterson recently spoke to Maximum Metal about the progress of the recording sessions for the band’s long-awaited new album, “The Dark Roots of Earth“, which he claims might be released in May.
Peterson states:
It was supposed to be out in late April but may [finnaly get released] in May, hopefully. [Producer] Andy Sneap is going to [mix]. We almost didn’t get it done, but he stepped up. There were a lot of things left undone that Andy knew and we didn’t feel right throwing it at [proposed mixer] Zeuss [real name: Chris Harris], who had a great mix set up; maybe we can do something with him in the future. It’s gonna be our heaviest record and we have a ballad called ‘Cold Embrace’ on the new album, which we haven’t had since the ‘Low’ album. We have songs on this album that have blast beats in the choruses with melodic vocals… very Dimmu Borgir/Emperor blast beats with Testament riffs with Chuck [Billy] doing ‘Practice What You Preach’-style vocals. ‘True American Hate’ may be the fastest song we have ever done. ‘The Dark Roots Of Earth’, which is the title track, sounds like ‘The Thing That Should Not Be’ by Metallica and ‘Sign Of The Southern Cross’ by Black Sabbath. There are lots of different textures; every song has its own trip. ‘Throne Of Thorns’ is an eight-minute epic, one of my favorite tracks off the new album… kind of like ‘Hole In The Sky’ by Black Sabbath. Lots of crazy middle sections that go into this weird jam that is just really cool. Also for me, I usually do leads. I did 30 percent of the leads on ‘Formation’, but it’s close to 50 percent on this album. Chuck is singing well and I think old fans are gonna love it. Hopefully, a lot of new people will jump on board as well.
TESTAMENT‘s last album, “The Formation of Damnation”, came out in 2008. It was their first recording in 9 years as well as their first with the original lineup in over 15 years.
TESTAMENT live:
