TESTAMENT’s CHUCK BILLY: ‘I Don’t Think The World Was Ready’ For The Coronavirus Pandemic

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TESTAMENT frontman Chuck Billy, who was one of the first metal musicians to test positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, spoke to the "Rock & Roll Beer Guy" podcast about how small businesses have been affected by the current crisis. He said (hear audio below): "There's some of those businesses out there that won't come back from this; this will be wiping out a lot of small business, and people aren't gonna have jobs to come back to. So things are gonna be different and changing. I think maybe people see and react to this, because I don't think the world was ready for it — just on a shortage of a lot of things and having a plan what to do if this happened. It's crazy that this has never happened, and it's happening now in our lifetime. I even trip on that even more so — within this hundred-year [window] of my life on this planet, a lot has happened — a lot of things have evolved and happened. It's, like, man, that's just a miniscule amount of time with what's going on on this planet." Billy also talked about whether fans be ready to pack music venues and arenas in the age of COVID-19 once live concerts are allowed to return to most of the globe. "I think a lot of people are gonna be timid about going or what they go to see and what they're doing," he said. "I think everybody's gonna sit back and watch what everybody else does and what happens because of it. You know, it's, like, 'Let them test the waters. Let's watch them.' There's gonna be those die-hards, especially metalheads, that'll just go, 'I'm going to the show. I've been dying to go,' and they'll go. But there'll be those ones that are just the ones that say, 'I'm gonna wait longer.' Or there'll be more people you'll see at shows wearing masks and still being a little more preventative." TESTAMENT's spring 2020 U.S. tour with THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, MUNICIPAL WASTE and MESHIAAK, which was originally scheduled to run from April 20 through May 15, has been postponed. TESTAMENT's new album, "Titans Of Creation", was released on April 3 via Nuclear Blast. The long-awaited follow-up to 2016's "Brotherhood Of The Snake" was produced by Billy and guitarist Eric Peterson while Juan Urteaga of Trident Studios handled co-producing, recording and engineering. Andy Sneap was responsible for the mixing and mastering of the album.