Chuck Billy admitted in a brand new interview that things were tough for Testament in the 90s and early 00s:
“When we first started, the original members were equal members, and then once we had the breakup, that’s when me and Eric [Peterson, guitar] started the label and the company that we have been working as. So right now, it’s just always been me and Eric. When the guys left, Alex [Skolnick, guitar] came back, I think, after fourteen years, and, I think, Greg [Christian, bass] after eight or nine. You know, so me and Eric have been holding the fort and kind of riding the wave with the ups and downs of the business, really. The ’90s and the early 2000s were really tough for us as a metal band. Major labels, at that point, were really starting to drop a lot of metal bands and the radio industry wasn’t playing metal very much on the radio anymore. I remember at that point, especially working with Atlantic, they were really pushing our singles, and there were at least close to two hundred stations across the U.S. that would play heavy metal in drivetime traffic, which was pretty unusual. And then that just kind of changed overnight; it was just gone and metal was off the charts, off everything — I mean, it was just insane what happened. And for us, unfortunately, we were at that period of our career where Alex was leaving the band, and Louie [Clemente, drums] left the band right before that. And things were kind of at the end for the band, the original band, at that point, and times were changing, music was changing, and it was the end of the record contract. Everything was happening at that point.”
